1528 Author’s Note: I thank Michael Burawoy for his invaluable guidance throughout this project and his thoughtful comments on multiple drafts of this article. Thanks also to Victoria Bonnell and the members of the Sociology Working Group at the Berkeley Program in Soviet and Post Soviet Studies for their help- ful feedback. American Behavioral Scientist Volume 49 Number 11 July 2006 1528-1553 © 2006 Sage Publications 10.1177/0002764206288848 http://abs.sagepub.com hosted at http://online.sagepub.com Transnational Politics and Settlement Practices Post-Soviet Immigrant Churches in Rome Cinzia Solari University of California–Berkeley Conventionally, social scientists regard immigrant churches as settlement institutions with immigrant assimilation as their goal. This study of Ukrainian immigrants who flooded to Rome in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union enhances an understanding of the role of immigrant churches by revealing their place in transnational politics. The divergent projects of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic church (UGCC) and the Russian Orthodox church (ROC) mediate relations between clergy and immigrant parishioners in Rome. The UGCC engages in an ethnonationalist project; priests see settlement practices as an opportunity to instill national and religious consciousness in Ukrainians expected to return and participate in constructing the new Ukrainian nation. By con- trast, the ROC’s project is one of church revival and manifests itself in the politically charged building of a cathedral next door to the Vatican. Ukrainian parishioners are marginal and even detrimental to this political vision. Russian Orthodox priests do not engage in settlement practices or support immigrants’ transnational ties. Keywords: migration; religion; Ukraine; Greek Catholicism; Russian Orthodoxy S ince the collapse of the Soviet Union, people from this region have been migrat- ing in search of work. Ukrainians began entering Italy in significant numbers during the past decade to fill the increasing demand for in-home cleaning and caring services. This influx has challenged the Ukrainian Greek Catholic church (UGCC) and the Russian Orthodox church–Moscow patriarchate (ROC) in Rome to minister to this growing immigrant population. 1 I found myself conducting fieldwork in Rome during a particularly charged political period. After a contested 2004 presidential election, mass protests known as the Orange Revolution broke out in Ukraine, and the Ukrainian community in Rome mobilized demonstrations in solidarity. As I went from church to church during those weeks, I saw that the Greek Catholic and Russian Orthodox clergy had divergent reactions to the