Refuge Reimagined by Mark R. Glanville & Luke Glanville

Author:Mark R. Glanville & Luke Glanville
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: refugee;refugees;refugee crisis;displacement;displaced people;forced displacement;ICE;immigration;refugees in the bible;immigration in the bible;asylum;political asylum;politics of refugees;obligation to refugees;international politics;refugee policy;biblical theology;old testament theology;biblical kinship;theology of kinship;refugees and the church
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Published: 2020-12-22T04:53:16+00:00

Those who fail to help the man who fell among thieves are portrayed in the parable as going out of their way not to help, or going out of their way to avoid a decision about whether to help. . . . Their not helping is an intentional doing: a decision to cross the road, a choice to go out of their way to avoid the predicament.55

It is worth contemplating the many ways in which Western states do not merely passively disregard the plight of their distant neighbors but actually “go out of their way” to keep them at a distance and to avoid an encounter that may require them to provide protection and welcome. Consider, for example, how the European Union (EU) struck a multibillion-dollar deal with Turkey in 2016, according to which Turkey would accept the return of asylum seekers who reached Greece by sea, use its security forces to prevent others from getting to Greece, and improve conditions for refugees in Turkey. The deal was justified on the grounds that it would reduce deaths of those seeking passage across the Mediterranean but was actually accompanied by both an increase in deaths at sea (since asylum seekers now needed to take more dangerous routes to reach EU countries) and a deterioration of conditions for those who remained in Turkey.56 The EU subsequently struck an even more problematic deal with Libya, funding, resourcing, and training the Libyan coast guard to intercept boats in the Mediterranean and return asylum seekers and other migrants to Libya, leaving them vulnerable to the well-documented possibility of arbitrary detention, torture, rape, enslavement, and murder.57 European governments condemn and even seek to criminalize efforts by nongovernmental actors to rescue asylum seekers stranded at sea, insisting that they should defer to the Libyan coast guard, who will return them to Libya.

Australian authorities, meanwhile, run a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign aimed at dissuading refugees from seeking asylum by boat. They have sought to discourage Afghanis in particular from seeking asylum by distributing a graphic novel depicting people like them stuck in offshore detention centers and suffering from medical problems and depression.58 Australia has also sought to keep vulnerable neighbors at a distance in a legal sense by excising the entirety of Australia’s territory from its migration zone. This means that even if some asylum seekers manage to make it to the mainland, they can be legally removed to an “offshore” detention center in a third country such as Nauru or Papua New Guinea and made subject to the government’s stated policy that none of them will ever be allowed into Australia.59 Those that Australia holds in indefinite offshore detention suffer greatly. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) reports that the mental health suffering of asylum seekers on Nauru is “among the worst MSF has ever seen, including in projects providing care for victims of torture.”60

On being the robbers. Consider further the many ways in which Western states act not merely as the priest and Levite but even as the robbers, not merely keeping vulnerable neighbors at a distance but also contributing to their vulnerability.

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