EMQ » April–June 2020 » Volume 56 Issue 2
By Narry F. Santos
Global migration plays a key role in transforming the ethnic and religious landscape of nations. The United Nations estimated that as of 2017, there were 258 million international migrants globally. This number equals 3.4 percent of the world population—compared to the 155 million as of 2000, or 2.8 percent of the population. Many of these international migrants leave their homeland for the purpose of employment. In fact, one analysis found that there were 164 million migrant workers in 2017.[1] This reality brings major implications for mission engagement among and through economic migrants. Before we observe how economic migrants can be engaged in mission, it is important to first define and briefly describe the different types of migrants whom we seek to reach.
Definition and Types of Migrants
The International Organization for Migration defines temporary economic migrants as “skilled, semi-skilled or untrained workers who remain in the receiving country for definite periods as determined in a work contract with an individual worker or a service contract concluded with an enterprise.”[2] According to Lewellen, there are nine types of migrants; namely: (1) internal migrants (those who move within the country); (2) international migrants (those who travel to different countries multiple times and return without making a significant social investment); (3) immigrants (those who leave the country of citizenship to live permanently or for a long time in another country); (4) transnational immigrants (those who continue to maintain contacts in both country of origin and host country through social, cultural, economic, and political networks); (5) diaspora (those who are dispersed from a homeland to multiple countries); (6) refugees (those dispersed through war, political repression, famine, or earthquake); (7) step migration (migratory pattern usually from rural to urban); (8) migratory chain (formation of a complex network so any migrant can follow the network); and (9) circular migration (routinized migration away from and back to the home community for agricultural or labor purposes).[3]
Gardner also proposed two types of migrants in the Gulf States: transnational proletariat (non-skilled working class) and diasporic elite (highly skilled professional class).[4] These two types occupy the two ends of the labor spectrum, with different migrants occupying multiple positions along the continuum. Skill level, tenure, employer, type of visa, migration network, family reunification, ethnicity, and religion determine the migrant social location along this continuum.[5]
Labor migration can alter the ethnic demography of a region.[6] For example, among the expatriate labor population in Kuwait, non-Arab Asians account for the highest proportion of the labor population with 65.3 percent, followed by Arabs from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), accounting for 30.95 percent. Migrants from Europe, America, and other regions comprise the remaining four percent of the labor population.[7] The top migrant-sending countries in 2003 were India (300,000), Egypt (260,000), Bangladesh (170,000), Sri Lanka (170,000), Pakistan (100,000), Syria (100,000), Iran (80,000), Philippines (70,000), and Jordan/Palestine (50,000).[8]
Labor migration can influence not only the ethnic demography of a nation but also its religious landscape. In fact, host and migrant churches can leverage these labor migration realities to reach out to the economic migrants whom God is bringing to their land. On the other hand, Christian economic migrants can use their temporary work context in order to be engaged in global mission.
How then can economic migrants be engaged in mission? Mission engagement happens among (or to) and through the economic migrants. To appreciate such mission, we need to understand the theological perspectives that move and motivate us to engage with the migrants and to actually take the steps to minister to them.
Mission Among (or To) the Temporary Economic Migrants
Gaining theological perspectives on migration yields more passion toward our mission among (or to) the temporary economic migrants. Here is the first theological perspective that can lead to more intentionality in ministering to them: the God of the Bible is a migrant God. “This is first and foremost born out in his migration from a non-accessible light to creation.”[9] Saman also depicts Jesus as an asylum seeker, refugee, and migrant,[10] becoming incarnated and pitching his tent in the neighborhood. Thus, God can be seen as the one who initiates crossing borders, overcoming barriers, and bringing people into reconciliation with him through Christ and with one another.
Moreover, mission among (or to) the economic migrants needs to be intentional because of another theological perspective: God’s people are pilgrims, migrants, and refugees.[11] Since Christianity is a migratory religion, and since migration movements have been a functional element in its expansion,[12] we need to reach out to the economic migrants.
The means to do mission among (or to) the migrants[13] is by building relationships of trust with them. To develop trust, the church needs to become a learning community. Becoming a learning community involves wanting to know them, their culture, hopes, dreams, struggles, faith or spirituality, human rights, and their basic human issues. Learning how to become in community with them implies the willingness to let go of the “stereotyping of migrants as social, economic, and criminal threats”[14] to their host country, and the determination to look beyond their differentness and to understand that in their marginalization they feel discomforted, distressed, and homeless. Such openness of mind and heart leads the church to know the migrants beyond the surface and to guard against unwarranted hostility and xenophobia.
In seeking to become a learning community, the church can discover how to work for justice and rights, and to welcome those who are newcomers and strangers in our midst.[15] The point of departure in ministering to migrants is a comprehensive and holistic understanding of mission that includes witness, worship, justice, dialogue, inculturation, and reconciliation under the basic attitude of humility and boldness. With this holistic approach in mind, we can view migration as a pastoral, ethical, and missiological challenge to engage the economic migrants.[16]
Mission Through the Temporary Economic Migrants
Aside from missions among (or to) the economic migrants, we also need to be engaged in mission through the economic migrants or what has been called the “mission of migrants” (with migrants as subjects of mission, not just as objects of mission).[17] The theological perspective that guides us to engage in such mission is this: migrants are missionaries, especially in the context of reverse mission. Reverse mission refers to the “historical shift, with Christian missionaries now coming from countries that were traditionally receivers of mission to work in countries, which traditionally were senders of mission.”[18] According to Hanciles, Asian and African migrants are especially effective and capable missionaries, due to their intercultural competency and experience of multi-religious contexts.[19]
How do we do mission through temporary economic migrants (especially in reverse mission contexts)? It is through the biblical concept of hospitality.[20] This approach works most especially with the help of Christian senior migrants with long tenure, who can serve as hosts to the newer migrants, who can invite friends in their social network and social capital, who can help meet the migrant necessities of housing, food, cell phone, and driver’s license. These senior migrants can also serve as local experts and guides in the new diasporic location, providing benevolent service of compassion and care—especially for migrants who face work difficulties in visa, residency, economic exploitation, physical and emotional abuse, and in the withholding of their salaries.
Along with senior migrants, host and migrant churches can also extend love to the new migrants by taking special collection, providing friendship and spiritual support, and rendering service to the homeland through the transnational flows of remittance support. This kind of remittance support can be exercised in order to help the poor, build homes for widows, and support the education of migrants’ children and the ministry of orphanages in their homeland.
On a weekly basis, host and migrant churches can also extend encouraging points of prayer and intercession on behalf of the migrant community. Their personal and corporate prayers can encourage the migrants who are exposed to employment difficulties, like visa complications and family needs in the homeland. Through prayer and hospitality, the church becomes a caring community that seeks to serve the migrants in the context of their needs and vulnerabilities.
On the other hand, Christian temporary migrant workers can engage in mission during their migration journey through story. This engagement in story relates to their narrative or testimony of joy and suffering, strength and weakness, peace and pain in the midst of their temporary work migration. Their stories can be a starting point to share their migration narrative and the story of the migrant God, who understands all suffering, weakness, and pain, because Jesus, the Refugee, went through similar suffering, weakness, and pain, yet was able to bring joy, strength, and peace to those who sought rest in him.
Christian migrants can also create bridges of migration connections by connecting this theological perspective to their own migration story: the Bible is a book of stories, which discusses life-changing narratives of migration (like the Abrahamic migration stories, Israel’s exodus from Egypt, the captivity of God’s people in Babylon, and the disciples of Jesus being on the way, living as aliens in the world). When the migrant believers (or host believers) share the good news of Christ’s love in the midst of their migration journey, the church becomes a celebrating community, seeking to share God’s love for all the nations through the good news of Jesus Christ, the Migrant, who incarnated among us, so that we may have life and its fulness.
It is worth noting that mission through the economic migrants can yield long-term fruit in the future. More fruit can come when the migrants return to their homeland, when they move to a different country for another work contract, when their contract is renewed in the same country, or when they move to North America, Europe, or Australia for immigration. In all these potential settings, the economic migrants can continue to strategically share their God stories of mission in Christ and God’s migration stories from the Bible.
Conclusion
In summary, the temporary economic migrants can be engaged in mission by challenging the host church to become a learning community toward the migrants (learning that God is a migrant God and that they are a migrant people seeking to discover the other and to build relationships of trust with the migrants), to become a caring community (loving and serving the migrants as our neighbors through hospitality), and to become a celebrating community (sharing the good news of Christ, our Asylum-seeker, Migrant, and Refugee, who despite his suffering, weakness, and pain, brings joy, strength and peace in the midst of the temporary workers’ migration journey).
Similarly, both the senior migrants in the host countries and the new migrants who are followers of Jesus can be engaged in mission. They can share their own stories of migration and the biblical migration stories that can bring hope (despite hardship) to other migrants and to members of their host nations. Thus, the host and migrant churches (as well as Christian migrants) can continue to build God’s Kingdom together by intentionally being engaged with the econmic migrants for global mission.
Narry F. Santos is Assistant Professor of Christian Ministry and Intercultural Leadership at Tyndale Seminary, Vice President of the Evangelical Missiological Society Canada, part-time Senior Pastor of Greenhills Christian Fellowship (GCF) Peel and GCF York, and member of the Lausanne North America Diaspora Strategy Team. Santos holds doctorates in New Testament and Philippine Studies, has written and co-edited several books, and contributed in academic journals.
[1] Migration Global Issue, Strategic Intelligence of the World Economic Forum, www.intelligence.weforum.org (accessed on June 18, 2019).
[2] International Organization on Migration, Glossary on Migration (Switzerland: IOM, 2004), 66.
[3] Ted Lewellen, The Anthropology of Globalization: Cultural Anthropology Enters the 21st Century (Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey, 2002), 130.
[4] Andrew Gardner, City of Strangers: Gulf Migration and the Indian Community in Bahrain (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010).
[5] Stanley John, “Conceptualizing Temporary Economic Migration to Kuwait: An Analysis of Migrant Churches Based on Migrant Social Location,” in Religion, Migration and Identity: Methodological and Theological Explorations, eds. Martha Frederiks and Dorottya Nagy (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2016), 97-111 (99). https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1163/j.ctt1w8h267.9.
[6] John, “Conceptualizing Temporary Economic Migration,” 105–06.
[7] “International Labour Migration and Employment in the Arab Region,” thematic paper prepared for the Arab Employment Forum, 19–21 October 2009, in Beirut, Lebanon, 19.
[8] Andrzej Kapiszewski, “Arab Versus Asian Migrant Workers in the GCC Countries,” paper prepared for the United Nations Expert Group Meeting on International Migration and Development in the Arab Region, Beirut, Lebanon 15–17 May 2006, 10.
[9] Nico A. Botha, “A Theological Perspective on Migrants and Migration Focusing on the Southern African Development Community (SADC),” Missionalia 41:2 (August 2013): 104–119.
[10] B. Saman, “Jesus Christ: Asylum Seeker, Refugee and a Migrant,” in StudentWorld 7:251 (2008): 51–60.
[11] Jehu Hanciles, “Migration and Mission: Some Implications for the Twenty-First-Century Church,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 27:4 (October, 2003): 146–153 (150).
[12] Samuel Escobar, “The Global Scenario at the Turn of the Century,” in Global Missiology for the Twenty-First Century: The Iguassu Dialogue, ed. William D. Taylor (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000), 34.
[13] Stephen B. Bevans, “Migration and Mission: Pastoral Challenges, Theological Insights,” in Contemporary Issues of Migration and Theology, ed. Elaine Padilla and Peter C. Phan, Christianities of the World (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 155–77 (158).
[14] Botha, “Theological Perspective on Migrants,” 108.
[15] Susan Snyder, “Hospitality and ‘Hanging Out’: Churches’ Engagement with People Seeking Asylum in the US,” in Mission and Migration, ed. Stephen Spencer (Derbys, UK: Cliff College, 2008), 129–40.
[16] Kari Storstein Haug, “Migration in Missiological Research,” International Review of Mission 107:1 (June 2018): 279–93.
[17] Benjamin Simon, From Migrants to Missionaries: Christians of African Origin in Germany, in Rochard Friedli et al., eds., Studies in the Intercultural History of Christianity (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2010).
[18] Rebecca Catto, “Non-Western Christian Missionaries in England: Has Mission Been Reversed?”, in Mission and Migration, ed. Spencer, 109–118 (109).
[19] Jehu J. Hanciles, Beyond Christendom: Globalization, African Migration, and the Transformation of the West (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2008).
[20] Pohl, Christine D. Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999); Marianne Moyaert, “Biblical, Ethical and Hermeneutical Reflections on Narrative Hospitality,” in Hosting the Stranger: Between Religions, ed. Richard Kearney and James Taylor (New York: Continuum, 2011), 95–108.
