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Immigration, Migration, and Kingdom Perspective
My name is Jo. I left my country six years ago looking for hope and a better life for my family. I came to this country to find a higher paying job so that I could take care of my wife and five children. I came here so my children could have an opportunity to receive a good education. I moved to here in search of prosperity. What I found was twelve-hour workdays and very little time with my children. The longer we are here, the more I fear my children will forget who they are and where they come from; I want them to remember our language, our culture, and our family values. Very few people have befriended us. I miss the tight-knit community in my home country. We are so lonely here. Where is our hope? Who will be our friend?
My name is Fatima. I came to this country five years ago with my eleven children after my husband was killed during the war in my country. Before coming to this country, we spent many years in a refugee camp in another country near our home. Life there was very hard. We had little food, and there was no schooling for my children. I gave birth to my youngest child in that camp. Then we received the news that we were allowed to come to this country. We did not know the language and had very little money. When we arrived in the city, we lived in a bad part of town. I was mugged once and my children were harassed daily. We were completely lost and lonely. My knowledge of the language is still poor. We all still have nightmares about the things that happened in our own country. We also fear what will happen to us here in this new country. How will we survive? Does anyone care?
My name is May. I am an international student at the university. My dream is to become very successful and make my family and my country proud. It is a great honor to be able to come to this country to study, but taking classes in a different language is very hard. It is also difficult to be separated from my family. In my country, three generations of a family usually live together in one house. Here at the university, I live all by myself. I spend a great amount of time studying, and most of the time I am lonely. I want to get to know some nationals, but everyone seems so busy and like they are in such a hurry. Does anyone care? Who will be my family while I am here?
While not all migrants share the same stories, Jo, Fatima, and May represent a great number of people migrating to countries across the world. For some, migration offers hope for a better way of life financially and educationally; for others, migration provides a way to escape persecution, war, and death. Highly skilled specialists and entrepreneurs migrate to a much better standard of living and quality of life than the family that is forced to relocate because of genocide. Some individuals and families move to other countries to be greeted by family and friends who preceded them, and who are able to offer some stability and security to their newly arriving relatives. Others arrive as students, refugees, or workers, knowing few, if any, people.
Though the stories are not exactly alike, all migrants have stories to tell. While it is important for us to hear such stories, having a kingdom perspective requires that we are praying and looking for opportunities for the stories of migrants to intersect with the story of Jesus, so that their future stories involve him.
Terminology and Types of Migration
At the risk of being labeled too simplistic when it comes to the topic of migration, I offer some simple explanations and definitions of commonly used words in the field of migration studies. Since this is not a book primarily addressing migration theories or contemporary secular issues in migration studies, I will leave the more robust discussions and definitions to the work of other scholars. With such a disclaimer in mind, I want to turn your attention to a brief overview of the different types of migration.
In his work The History of Human Migration, Russell King shared three common divisions related to migration that will assist us in âcreating a conceptual map of human mobility.â While King rightly recognized that there are limitations to these divisions (e.g., some migration situations cannot be easily divided but can be classified according to both divisions), migration is sometimes referred to as being internal or international (e.g., moving to a different location in oneâs country versus moving to a different country altogether); forced or voluntary (e.g., moving due to being forced into slavery versus moving out of a desire to live with relatives); and permanent or temporary (e.g., moving for indefinite employment versus moving for seasonal employment).
While these three common divisions are helpful to keep in mind, it is also important that you are aware of the meanings of a few words used throughout this book. Migration is the movement of a people from one location of residence to another location of residence. Throughout this book, I use this term to refer to a very broad range of people on the move. Migrants can refer to those who would be categorized as long-term workers or short-term workers, students, refugees, stateless peoples, asylum seekers, and people in the process of immigrating as well as those who have immigrated to another country.
Immigration is understood as the movement of a people into a different country to settle.
Emigration is the departure from oneâs country to settle elsewhere.
Refugee can be a challenging word to define, so I will use a commonly accepted definition. According to the United Nations Refugee Agency, the 1951 Refugee Convention establishing the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees notes that a refugee is a person âowing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country.â An asylum seeker is a person who claims to be a refugee, but whose claim has not yet been definitively evaluated.
I recognize that we typically hear the word immigration used more often than migration. It should be noted, however, that throughout this book I often use the latter word to communicate the overarching notion of the movement of all kinds of peoples across the world. While issues related to the movement of peoples from one country to another to settle for permanent residence (immigration) are very important matters today, the church must recognize that such movements are not limited only to those who will take up citizenship in another land but include the temporary resident as well.
Stephen Castles and Mark J. Miller offered some helpful information regarding two additionally important terms: foreign born and foreign national:
The foreign born include persons who have become naturalized, that is, who have taken on the nationality (or citizenship) of the receiving country. . . . The category excludes children born to immigrants in the receiving country (the second generation) if they are citizens of that country. The term foreign nationals excludes those who have taken on the nationality of the receiving country, but includes children born to immigrants who retain their parentsâ nationality (which can be a large proportion of the second and even third generations in countries which do not confer citizenship by right of birth).
Kingdom Perspective on Global Migrations
The history of humanity is a history of migration. Ever since the exodus from Eden (Genesis 3:23â24), men and women have been on the move. The expansion of the Europeans in the 1500s began a new era in the history of migration. While the nineteenth and twentieth centuries recorded large movements of peoples across the globe, mainly from Europe to the United States, the latter part of the twentieth and early twenty-first century has revealed that migration is now more of a global phenomenon. Globalizationâwith advances in telecommunications, faster and safer forms of transportation, as well as new political structuresâhas helped facilitate the movement of large numbers of people on a global scale. Such matters have caught the attention of many scholars. Castles and Miller titled their highly praised book The Age of Migration because numerous momentous events across the globe now involve international migration. And according to these authors, there are several reasons to expect this age of migration to continue:
Growing inequalities in wealth between the North and South are likely to impel increasing numbers of people to move in search of better living standards; political, environmental, and demographic pressures may force many people to seek refuge outside their own countries; political or ethnic conflict in a number of regions could lead to future mass flights; and the creation of new free trade areas will cause movements of labor, whether or not this is intended by the governments concerned. But migration is not just a reaction to difficult conditions at home; it is also motivated by the search for better opportunities and lifestyles elsewhere. It is not just the poor who move; movements between rich countries are increasing too. Economic development of poorer countries can actually lead to greater migration because it gives people the resources to move. Some migrants experience abuse or exploitation, but most benefit and are able to improve their lives through mobility. Conditions may be tough for migrants but are often preferable to poverty, insecurity, and lack of opportunities at homeâotherwise migration would not continue.
While the sociological and anthropological discussions for the migrations of people explain such movements in humanistic categories (e.g., war, persecution, education, economics), as kingdom citizens we understand that the Lord of the nations is working out his will in the universe, and the migration of peoples to other lands is not a serendipitous occurrence. Such is particularly true with the migration of the worldâs least reached people groups to areas of the world where they can freely encounter the gospel of Jesus Christ.
The Theological Assumption
Even a cursory reading of the Scriptures reveals that the God who created the heavens and earth is very much engaged with his creation. He is both transcendent and imminent. He is not the god of deism, who created the world and then wandered off to some distant corner of the universe to let it all wind down on its own like some cosmological clock. He is not the impotent god of the process theologians, always hanging on to the edge of his seat, wondering what will happen next in the universe and freaking out because things are out of his control. Rather, the Scriptures portray an omnipotent and omniscient God who is sovereign over everything. While his creation may not necessarily understand his thoughts and ways (Isaiah 55:8â9), he is working out everything for the good of his people and his glory.
So how do these characteristics of God connect with global migrations of millions of people? Simply, God is at work in the world, in the good times and the bad times. He is at work through the mass movements of peoples from the rural communities to the cities, from persecution, war, and starvation to lands of security and prosperity, and from areas where educational and economic lift are rare to locations where such matters are assumed to be the norm.
In his address on Mars Hill, the apostle Paul spoke to the polytheistic Athenians about this God. His presentation included an important reference noting that the Lord is sovereign over his creation, specifically over history and people. Luke recorded, âAnd he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of usâ (Acts 17:26â27).
While this is a significant passage in Paulâs Mars Hill address, these two verses are not the easiest to understand from the original Greek language in which they were written. Though scholars have argued over the ex...
