12 - Principle One: Migration is a Human Condition. (Part 1)

2022 No 12

God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.
--Genesis 1:27-28

A funny thing happened when I began to study migration. I discovered that I was a migrant also! Born in a naval hospital in Virginia, I have since lived in eight different states and four other countries. I have moved for family relocations, education, employment, religion, and even COVID. I currently live in a country where the language, culture, and faith are very different from my own. My wife and I live here under a temporary residence permit. In other words, we could be asked to leave tomorrow.

And among most people in the world… we are typical!

As we have tried to get our arms around the principles that underly migration, we have come to face the stark reality that migration is a human experience. People move. Why? Because people move! Jehu Hanciles wrote,

Human migration is a fact of history. People have been on the move from the earliest times, often over great distances and for a wide variety of reasons, including trade, epidemics, economic opportunities, asylum, war, persecution, natural disasters, even adventure. Most significantly, when people move, they carry their ideas, beliefs, and religious practices with them.¹

Migration is a principle of humanity, and such has been true from the beginning of creation. Just a casual view of Scripture will reveal a wide variety of movements. Many are, for good reasons, reflecting God’s divine plan. They are caring for their families and expanding God’s kingdom. Other displacements are for tragic reasons and expose the pain and suffering that sin brings to this world. Most movements, however, are amoral. That means that they are simply people's individual choices as they manage the daily events of their lives. But in both cases, certain elements remain consistent.

Migration is a Common Experience

It is essential to understand that movement is a shared experience. To demonstrate this principle, one does not have to look much further than one's own life. Very few adults reading this article still live in the city of their birth. If fortunate, you grew up in one neighborhood, but like others, you later moved to go to school or to find a job. This reality is the utter heartbreak of most pastors. Their joy is to pray over a new baby, watch them grow up, lead them to faith, and see them begin to grow in Christ. The pain is in seeing them move away. In most places, churches are unimaginably transient. People seldom stay in the same church for more than a few years. In our fellowship in Denver, we had to add over a hundred new members each year to maintain our attendance.

This transient nature is not just a first-world reality. The vast majority of sub-Saharan Africa is mobile. The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) has estimated that over 200 million persons, roughly one in five, do not live in their city or village of birth.² The primary drivers of SSA movements are educational, economic, and forced displacements. As noted in a previous post, the median age is under twenty years, meaning that half of her population is of school age.³ Twenty-five years ago, a third of the population lived in rural areas. Two-thirds will live in the cities by 2050, with over sixty percent living in slum conditions.⁴ Nine of every ten Africans live in poverty, surviving on less than $5.50 per day.⁵ Four of them live on less than two dollars a day. It may also be helpful to consider that of the world's 29 poorest countries, 28 are found in sub-Saharan Africa.⁶ And the context of migration also requires that we understand that over half of the world’s conflict occurs on this continent, creating millions of involuntary displacements.⁷ Africa is not an easy place to live.

As in the West, people in Africa move to secure a better life for themselves and their families. The communal nature of the culture only intensifies this sense of obligation. Given an opportunity to go to school, take a new job, get married, or find a better community to raise their family, most will go. Those with resources will weigh the options and will take the pathway that seems reasonable and has the highest chance of success. Those without resources will take more significant risks, depending on their situation and perception of benefit. But in the end, movement is common, voluntary, and contrary to what you may hear... often finds success.

Migration is a Continual Experience

It is also essential to understand that movement is a continual experience. Seldom is migration a one-off event. One can speak of places of origin, destination, and transition, but each is true only in the context of the moment. We can use terms like diaspora, refugee, student, or economic migrant, but they are more labels than definitive descriptions. There are legal categories such as asylum seekers, irregular migrants, or unaccompanied minors. However, those labels can change quickly with a subjective judgment by some governmental authority. Categories may be neat and easy to chart, but human movements are challenging to put into boxes.

People are on the move, and in today’s environment, they are continually moving. For many, it is simply the natural progression of their lives. You grow up with your parents and then relocate to another city for school. Once you enter the job market, transfers and career changes often lead to further relocations. The days have quickly passed when someone grew up on the farm and never left. One child may take over the family business, but the siblings often make their own way. In many cultures, wives will follow their husbands on their career paths, leaving extended family behind.

For others, secondary movements can result from an insatiable desire for greener grass. Allow me to share an illustration. One Sunday, in an immigrant church in Turkey, I met a man from Cameroon. He had gained a scholarship to a local university and was in the final stages of completing his Ph.D. His wife had joined him, and they now had two small children. He had a job in the community and had been successful by all appearances. And yet, he shared that he was considering paying a smuggler to take his family into Greece. Why? Because he somehow thought that life would be better. I tried to convince him otherwise but he was set on his next move.

One can undoubtedly find groups of migrants resettled in another country, who have created ethnic quarters in their host cities, and can track their presence for generations. These diasporic clusters represent a kind of one-way migration where entire communities seek to maintain their ethnic identity while being members of their host country. But that is also changing today. Even in the most stable of immigrant populations, some will choose to migrate yet again if it creates an opportunity to find improvement in their lives or the lives of their children.

If labeling migrants doesn’t work, then one can imagine that developing ministry strategies requiring labels will also prove ineffective. If we have discovered anything, it is that migrant status and location are always in a state of flux. There is a myth that migrants move from location A to location B and then stay put. This scenario is seldom the case. Migrants are transient, neighborhoods are constantly changing, and the picture outside the local church is ever-evolving. As such, I urge caution. Developing complex strategies that require people to fit into specific categories and to remain in the same place for any length of time is unwise. That may have worked in the past in a rural or smaller community context, but not today. The world is simply moving at a pace that seldom affords such an approach.

Migration is a Circular Experience

It is vital to understand further that migration is often circular. Our world is becoming increasingly globalized, by which I mean to say that people are interconnected. We will spend more time on this in the next post. But for our purposes here, it is crucial to recognize that although people may leave home, they never fully disconnect. Today, it is not that difficult to send a text, make a call, or chat by video with family back home. Connections with fellow migrants and friends endure everywhere one has lived or passed. Money earned in one part of the world can be transferred with increasing ease. In many cases, a family can live in one country while the breadwinner works in another country or even on another continent. In the end, many will make their way back to the place where they started.

In Paris, for example, there is a long history of circular migration. Men from across West Africa have been in France since the last world war. African villages and communities established networks of support in Paris, and they then sent generation after generation of young men to work and send money back home. Those with legal visas can easily make trips back home to visit their families and support their communities. And then, one day, they will leave their work permits in the hands of a favored son or nephew and retire in the house they had been building in Africa.

In Istanbul, Africans have established points of trade with the textile industry. Commerçants make frequent trips to purchase clothing for resale back home. Due to the evident prosperity of the city, many will choose to make their home in Turkey rather than live in Africa. A thriving industry of labor, shipping, and commerce exists and sustains thousands of immigrants. Most will maintain close contact with African clients and family, and many will invest their earnings in property and business endeavors back on the continent. Such creates an incentive for future migrants and, for them, a place ultimately to retire.

These stories can be replicated across the spectrum of African, if not all, global migration. People generally move to find a better life. In the past, such movements were often an effort to exchange a “known” challenging environment for a “perceived” better place. It was typically a one-way trip. Today, however, people can gain what the outside world offers without losing the components of their homeland that they value and cherish. In a way, our modern world has taken away much of the isolation and suffering that migration once demanded of many.

Conclusion:

As we said earlier, people move because people move! And for many reasons, they are moving in more significant numbers than ever before. Modern migration is like the proverbial snowball gaining speed and mass as it goes down the hill. People are moving by the hundreds of millions, and it is forever changing our world. Fortunately, God's people stand in a great position to engage. But to be effective, the church and her missional arms must be prepared to adjust to these global changes.

Without a doubt, Christian ministry has become more complicated than in previous generations. In the past, a pastor could live in the community, focus on extended relationships, and minister to most of her citizens. A missionary could serve in a rural context, master the language and culture, and significantly influence many. For both the minister and the missionary, they could often plant a seed of the gospel, nurture it to salvation, and then enjoy the days of ongoing maturation. But that was a day when such places were homogeneous, and their populations were generally immobile. As we have already noted, things are rapidly changing.

Today, the rural areas are being depopulated as young adults make their way to the cities to find jobs. Urban centers are becoming increasingly diverse as historic ethnic neighborhoods are being overrun by outsiders. The contemporary minister/missionary must now work in diverse, heterogeneous environments where the populations are highly mobile. Their most extended time of service may be to the children until they become adults and then the adults after they retire. Everyone in between will most likely be transient. Christian workers may plant a seed but not see it sprout. They may lead someone to faith but not be able to do extended discipleship.

We have now entered a day when the church must adjust to these realities. In many ways, the work is getting easier. Ministry is always simplified when it occurs in community and among people who hold things in common. If such is true, then the migrant in the neighborhood is not that much different from the migrant in the church… who also happens to be the pastor! The compassion of Christ compels us to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. Since most of us are on this road together, ministry to migrants should come naturally.

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¹Jehu Hanciles, "Migration and Mission: Some Implications for the Twenty-First-Century Church," International Bulletin of Missionary Research 27, no. 4 (2003): 146.

²UNDESA, World Population Prospects 2019 Vol. 12019. Informal estimates place the number much higher, at perhaps 50-80%. And… one must remember that over 40% of the population is under the age of 14, with a much less likely chance of having migrated.

³Ibid.

⁴Somik Vinay Lall, African Cities: Opening Doors to the World (Washington DC: World Bank Group, 2017), 38.

⁵World Bank, "ProvcalNet: An Online Analysis Tool for Global Poverty Monitoring", World Bank http://iresearch.worldbank.org/PovcalNet/home.aspx (accessed November 25, 2021).

⁶Nirav Patel, "Figure of the Week: Understanding Poverty in Africa", Brookings Institute https://www.brookings.edu/blog/africa-in-focus/2018/11/21/figure-of-the-week-understanding-poverty-in-africa/ (accessed November 17, 2021).

⁷Simon Allison, "Conflict Is Still Africa’s Biggest Challenge in 2020", Institute for Security Studies https://issafrica.org/iss-today/conflict-is-still-africas-biggest-challenge-in-2020?utm_source=BenchmarkEmail&utm_campaign=ISS_Today&utm_medium=email (accessed November 17, 2021).