Asylum-Seeking, Migration and Church

Susanna Snyder

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317177722
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Emigración e inmigración

Asylum-Seeking, Migration and Church addresses one of the most pressing issues confronting contemporary society. How are we to engage with migrants? Drawing on studies of church engagement with asylum seekers in the UK and critical immigration and refugee issues in North America, Snyder presents an extended theological reflection on both the issue of asylum-seeking and the fears of established populations surrounding immigration. This book outlines ways in which churches are currently supporting asylum seekers, encouraging closer engagement with people seen as 'other' and more thoughtful responses to newcomers. Creatively exploring biblical and theological traditions surrounding the 'stranger', Snyder argues that as well as practising a vision of inclusive community churches would do well to engage with established population fears. Trends in global migration and the dynamics of fear and hostility surrounding immigration are critically and creatively explored throughout the book. Inviting more complex, nuanced responses to asylum seekers and immigrants, this book offers invaluable insights to those interested in Christian ethics, practical theology, social work, mission and faith and social action, as well as those working in the field of migration.

PART I
Setting the Scene

Chapter 1
Encountering Migrants

It was a cold spring day. I had been called and asked whether I could accompany Annette to the Home Office Reporting Centre in Solihull.¹ Sure, I said. No problem. We drove from Birmingham city centre, parked in the multi-storey and took the short walk across the road to the centre. Annette seemed nervous but I didn’t think any more of it. It was to be expected. She went through security and into the room where asylum seekers queued to be seen by an official. Nearly an hour must have gone by. I was outside and beginning to get twitchy now too. It shouldn’t have taken anything like this long and the waiting area was hardly designed to make you feel welcome and relaxed. Annette suddenly appeared behind some glass; she was waving at me and clearly anxious. The case official accompanying her came out and explained that they were holding onto her as there was a problem – they wouldn’t tell me what – and that she seemed to be having an asthma attack. She wanted me to fetch her medication from a drawer in her house. Not having a clue where she lived – she had moved into a new place only three days before – I rummaged in the handbag she had left with me and found some keys and an address on a scrap of paper. I rushed to the car and got hopelessly lost trying to find her room, somewhere in a cul-de-sac in Chelmsley Wood. I felt like a criminal trying the key in every door in the house before entering her tiny room and rifling through the drawers to find an inhaler. No luck. All I could find was a huge bag of medications. I just grabbed it and dashed back to the car. Using one hand to reverse out of the drive, I used the other to phone Shari at Restore. I explained what had happened and she promised to get straight onto Annette’s solicitor. I eventually arrived back at the centre, handed over the bag of medications and went through security myself. Annette still seemed distressed, sitting opposite her case official in a cubbyhole. My phone vibrated. I got outside just in time to answer and it was Shari saying that Annette would probably be released if her solicitor could fax a document through immediately. Was there a fax number? Nobody seemed to know. The case official appeared and then disappeared again. All I can assume is that the relevant documentation arrived satisfactorily. Annette appeared at the doorway to the waiting area a few minutes later, looking exhausted and relieved.

Migration: A Variety of Encounters, a Global Controversy

This personal vignette, from February 2005, offers a glimpse into one kind of encounter that can take place between migrants and members of established populations today. There are plenty of less positive encounters, though, as this experience from June 2011 illustrates:

The taxi driver started talking as we were on the way back from a grocery store in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He said that he had come to the US from Italy when he was four years old and that he had worked hard all his life. He was from Boston and didn’t like Cambridge much. He told me that he had fought in the Vietnam War and protested against it – there were ‘morons’ in power then – and that the country was going downhill fast now. We should get rid of all the immigrants, he said. He couldn’t believe that you could take your driving test in so many languages other than English – this was ‘moronic’ – and pointed out that they were creating big problems and breeding like crazy. Americans should keep their noses out of other people’s business, he reckoned, and thought that the military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan were stupid. Conversely, everyone should stay out of the US. If they didn’t, capital punishment was the appropriate response. He told me in no uncertain terms that he thought the best thing to do with the Middle East was to ‘nuke’ it.

These are simply two of the millions of individual, local and national stories that comprise the global controversy surrounding migration. Migration, a hot social and political potato across the world, is rarely out of the headlines or off governmental agendas and thus, even if not in person, almost everyone is encountering migrants at one remove politically or virtually. In 2011, unrest in Libya, Egypt and Tunisia gave rise to talk about a ‘new asylum crisis’ in Europe likely to result from a ‘massive inflow of economic migrants’ (Whitehead 2011) and David Cameron, British prime minister, called upon the public to ‘shop’ illegal immigrants and those ‘wishing to take advantage’ of the UK to the authorities (Woodcock and Tapsfield 2011). In the US, comprehensive immigration reform remains a key political controversy and stories about the dangers of illegal immigration abound. The headline ‘Asylum Ploys Feed on News to Open Door’ ran in the New York Times in July – in the wake of the revelation that the woman who accused Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, of rape was an asylum seeker (Dolnik 2011) – and in September, furore erupted over the passing of stringent anti-immigrant legislation in Alabama and when an ‘illegal’ immigrant was found guilty of drunk driving in Massachusetts (Andersen 2011). In Australia, Prime Minister Julia Gillard tried unsuccessfully to swap 800 asylum seekers whose cases had not yet been determined with 4,000 ‘genuine refugees’ already certified by the United Nations in Malaysia. In Libya, black African migrants who had been working there as casual labourers were attacked and captured by rebel forces claiming that they were Colonel Gadaffi mercenaries (Pannell 2011). On a trip to Tanzania in 2009, I remember a taxi driver talking about how Burundian and Rwandan refugees were causing problems, taking jobs and causing crime, and how he wanted them to go home. Many other Tanzanians share his views (Hennig 2011).

People tend to have strong feelings about immigration, often negative, and see migrants as a threat to national identity, culture, jobs, resources and security. Migrants are also bringing about significant changes in religious landscapes through the diverse beliefs and practices they carry with them, and some see this as a danger to the traditions and values they have grown up with. Many want immigration – in-migration to their country – to stop. Their hostility is exacerbated by the perception that immigration is on the increase. In August 2011, net migration into the UK was announced to be 21 per cent higher in 2010 than 2009, with 239,000 more people arriving than leaving (BBC 2011). In the US, even though immigration from Mexico has almost halted due to increasingly stringent border controls and changing economic contexts, people still believe that many are entering the country without papers. This anti-immigrant climate is having detrimental effects on migrants and would-be migrants, in that it is becoming increasingly difficult for anyone – particularly those who are poor – to gain entry to certain countries and to access basic rights within them. Visas can be virtually impossible to obtain, and detention and deportation of immigrants without them are on the increase, leading to considerable fear, separation from families and places that have become ‘home’ and, in the worst cases, even death. In the face of this, however, some are stepping forward to support newcomers and calling for more generous immigration and asylum policies. They affirm the need to welcome migrants and value the contributions they make.

Beginnings

This book explores the encounters of churches with migrants and particularly their engagement with asylum seekers in the UK. In 2004, while I was training for Anglican ordination in Birmingham, I decided to start helping at a drop-in for refugees and asylum seekers at Ladywood Methodist Church, where I fumblingly taught some English and assisted in the crèche. We had parties and danced and ate far too much cake. I listened to stories and was angered to hear of the injustices many had experienced in their countries and in the UK and was moved by their courage and resilience. I was also amazed at the energy and commitment of those involved in running the drop-in. Wishing to become more involved, I trained as a befriender with Restore, an ecumenical organization supporting refugees and asylum seekers in the city, and began meeting regularly with Fatima. Having left three older children behind in Cameroon, Fatima lived with her two young children in Nechells. When heavily pregnant, she and her daughter had been placed in detention for 10 days and taken to Heathrow for deportation. They were returned to Birmingham on compassionate grounds, but Fatima still had to report to the Home Office in Solihull every month and lived in daily fear of a dawn removal raid. Her flat, at the top of a grim concrete tower block in which the lifts smelt of urine, was virtually bare and she had little money for food or toys. However, she soon discovered local playgroup facilities, joined a class to improve her English and became pregnant again. I remember with delight holding her new baby when she was just one day old.

Around the same time, I started a year-long placement at Birmingham Cathedral. It was there that I met Annette, Lucille and Hassan. Annette was from Rwanda and had been imprisoned for failing to support a presidential campaign. In prison, she was subjected to physical and sexual assaults. Lucille was from Burundi and had, like Fatima, been forced to leave her children behind. Hassan, an Iranian, spent much time at the Cathedral helping as a volunteer welcomer and was often there when I dropped in – always smiling and wearing a cross. I helped to organize an awareness-raising evening on asylum-seeking and also co-ran, with an artist in the congregation, a short series of art workshops for asylum seekers. I assisted with the Restore Summer Holiday Programme in 2005, accompanying families on days out to Telford, a nature centre and swimming pools.

The idea to undertake research on this theme emerged soon after my first encounters at the Ladywood Methodist Church. Why, I wondered, were asylum seekers’ experiences in the UK so awful and why were churches engaging with them so extensively? Did those seeking asylum feel that these projects were helpful? I was also intrigued as to why Christians volunteered and why certain projects were focused in a particular direction. As well as hoping that my research could enhance church-based support, I also had other more personal motivations. Research is always as much about the ‘self’ of the researcher as it is about the topic or people being studied (Heywood 2004: 73, 86, Etherington 2004: 99, 109). I had long been interested in issues of justice and development and their relationship to Christian faith, and had, for instance, visited Mozambique in 2003 when it was still recovering from a civil war in which four million people had been displaced. I was also feeling in ‘exile’ myself. I was passing through theological college and at an in-between stage personally, struggling with my faith, aspects of the institutional church and a sense of not belonging in a diverse theological training environment. A personal sense of being out of place, I am sure, drew me to others who were far more literally and profoundly displaced. Pragmatically speaking, I had a final year to complete at college and was being encouraged to undertake postgraduate work. Time, opportunity, encouragement, personal need and a situation crying out for research thus coalesced.

Since then, I have continued to try to stand alongside people seeking sanctuary. During three years in Northeast London, I worked with the Hackney Refugee and Migrant Support Group to help establish the Hackney Migrant Centre at St Mary Stoke Newington, where I was curate, and I supported campaigns and various refugee networks. I helped out at a computer skills class for unaccompanied asylum-seeking minors in Oxford, before moving to the US in 2009 – first to Atlanta, Georgia, and then to Cambridge, Massachusetts – where I have lived as a ‘non-resident alien’ myself.

Aims and Argument

This book examines and critiques current church engagement with migrants in order to bring about improved practice. It asks the questions: how are churches interacting with newcomers, and why? Are there ways in which they could improve what they are currently doing? How might Christians help to transform the attitudes of those, like the Boston taxi driver, who are hostile to immigrants, and bring about changes in immigration and asylum policy? How could they facilitate better encounters between members of established populations and migrants? I argue that Christian communities make substantial, valuable contributions to asylum seeker support and that Christians are prominent among those welcoming and calling for the inclusion of immigrants. Church involvement takes place in a variety of ways, through what I categorize as encounters of service, encounters with the powers, encounters in worship and encounters in theology. By bringing these encounters into conversation with Forced Migration Studies, which will be discussed in Chapter 2, insights from other social scientific disciplines and biblical and theological traditions, I aim to analyse the context in which churches are working and the call placed upon them by Christian faith. I offer critical assessment of their involvement and make suggestions for renewed practice, which I hope will lead towards more faithful and liberatory encounters, not only for migrants, but also for the churches supporting them and for established populations more generally. The book is written for scholars of migration and religion, theologians and ethicists, seminary students, faith communities and faith leaders who are standing alongside immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers – many of whom are themselves migrants. I also aim to speak to Christians who may feel ambivalent about newcomers. While I focus on asylum seekers and the UK, I hope that this book will also prove useful for those studying other types of migration and those living in different countries. Similar threads in terms of experience, attitude, policy, practice and response weave their way across migrant categories, nation-state borders and faith traditions.

The Role of Faith-based Organizations in Society

In order to evaluate the contribution being made by churches to migrant support, it is important to understand the context in which religious communities and faith-based organizations (FBOs) find themselves operating today.² Churches continue to engage substantially on social issues despite patterns of declining attendance and the loss of their more-or-less exclusive role as providers of welfare and charity (Prochaska 2006). This contribution is often referred to as spiritual or faithful capital, and takes place against the backdrop of evolving and complex relationships between FBOs and states in Europe and North America. Two contradictory governmental impulses are operative. On one hand, there is a growing enthusiasm about the potential role of FBOs in service delivery, community regeneration and the provision and development of social capital (Baker 2007, 2009, Beaumont 2008, CULF 2006, Davis et al. 2008, Furbey et al. 2006, Graham and Lowe 2009: 155, Sager 2010). Religion, in this sense, is seen by governments as ‘cuddlesome’ and a valuable partner (Furbey 2010, Bretherton 2010: 34). Cloke puts it this way: ‘as state-run welfare services have been hollowed out’ in line with dominant neoliberal thinking, so faith-based organizations along with other non-statutory bodies – the ‘Third Sector’ – ‘have often been the principal gap-filler’ (2010: 224). The UK Department for Communities and Local Government White Paper, Communities in Control: Real People, Real Power, signifies this movement towards more substantial involvement of religious organizations (2008), as does the Coalition government’s talk of the ‘Big Society’. Sager, reflecting on developments in the US, dates a ‘growing devolution of government social services to the nonprofit and private sectors’ and ‘the increasingly prominent role of religion in politics and policy’ to the 1996 Welfare Reform Bill (2010: 17). Interfaith initiatives are particularly welcome, presenting opportunities to build ‘bridging social capital’ as well as provide services (Weller 2009).

On the other hand, statutory bodies are sceptical about the motivation, impact and efficacy of faith communities perceived to pursue their own agendas of proselytism, promote intercommunal tensions and prevent integration (Farnell 2009). There has been a ‘securitization of religion’ and fear of links between some strands in Islam and terrorism is ever-present (Bretherton 2010: 35). Reflecting a broader tension between the discourses of secularism and post-secularism, this produces a complex landscape for faith communities to navigate.³ While ‘religious capital’ or practical contributions are often welcomed, ‘spiritual capital’ is resisted (see Baker 2009, Baker and Skinner 2006). Thus, according to Cloke, although the system of contract funding has enabled faith groups to re-enter the policy-making sphere, churches face a dilemma. They can find themselves in

partnerships of governance that may dilute, or at least press into the background, the very faith-motivations that originally formed the basis of their existence. The more that FBOs have entered into compact contracts, the more they have found themselves locked into centrally-controlled ways of operating … their ethos, and their character can change. (2010: 229)

Bretherton describes this as ‘institutional isomorphism’ (2010: 43). Some faith-based groups choose to resist co-option and critically challenge governmental approaches and policies: when doing so, to use a phrase coined by Furbey, they are perceived as ‘admirably troublesome’ (2010, Farnell 2009). In the wake of the global economic downturn, access to funding sources is also increasingly difficult and many FBOs are forced to spend considerable time and energy filling out grant applications in order to secure the future of their work. This is certainly true for many of the Christian organizations working with people seeking asylum in the UK.

Definitions and Par...