This session explores contexts and practices regarding resistance and the oppression of people on the move across diverse countries. The cases examine a spectrum of circumstances including resistance against deportation, countering hate crimes, and the decolonialization of refugee relief. Throughout these contexts, the theological agency of people on the move is presented, including their choice to change religions through conversion. The papers in this session highlight theological agency as a core concern for ethics, politics, and the study of religion.
Although the current academic discussion on religious conversion predominantly considers conversion as a process, the number of empirical studies that explore the same converts in different points in time remains limited. Also, there is still little research on the asylum seekers’ conversions from Islam to Christianity following the so-called 2015 refugee crisis. This article provides a longitudinal perspective through revisiting the experiences of Iraqi forced migrants in Finland, first interviewed in 2017–2018 and then six years later in 2023–2024. While religious conversion has been defined in various ways in different academic fields, faith traditions and societal contexts, this study takes a data-driven approach and analyzes what conversion means in these data. The results show that conversion can signify different things to different individuals, as well as the same individuals at different times, providing perspectives useful to academia and societal actors dealing with religion and forced migration.
This paper investigates the intersection of immigration and hate crimes within the United States, focusing on the analysis of hate crime incidents motivated by race and religion across 32 gateway cities from 2015 to 2019. It aims to illuminate the patterns of hate crimes in areas with high immigrant populations using data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation Uniform Crime Reporting Program. By examining these incidents in metropolitan areas known for their significant immigrant populations, the research provides insights into the prevalence of hate crimes targeting immigrants, offering a crucial contribution to the discourse on hate crimes and immigration in the U.S. This exploration, underpinned by a quantitative methodology, not only highlights the significance of scrutinizing hate crimes in the context of rising diversity and immigration but also serves as a crucial resource for policymakers and community organizations striving to create a more equitable society.
Deportation today can be deadly. Since 2016 there have been dozens of cases where migrants have been killed shortly after being deported from the United States, and for some citizens this is an appropriate punishment and payment for the sin and “dishonor” of violating borders. However, I argue we have the mandate to change what we cannot accept by standing in for the migrant; we are called to interrupt immigration violence existentially as the new focus of punishment; politically as voices for those unable to speak; and viscerally by interjecting via loving protest and spiritual care. In this paper, I use Anselm’s theory of satisfaction to offer a necessary alternative to the theory of penal substitution that predominates our immigration discourse today, and I call on K. Anthony Appiah’s discussion of honor to explain how this need of society is very present yet often unacknowledged in immigration discourse.
Popular movements in the United States that center undocumented migrants from Latin America invite us to challenge wisdom received from some Christian religious traditions, retrieve knowledge that is confined to the margins of elsewhen and elsewhere, and reason in ways that contribute to struggles that disrupt and transform. This presentation outlines several key insights emergent from engaged research with a nonviolent movement fighting for dignity and respect for immigrants in the United States, Movimiento Cosecha. It is a part of a broader project focusing on people in popular processes in the United States as agents under duress. In keeping with 2021 collaborative research agreement, the project aims to articulate an alternative to approaches to immigrants oriented by the helper/helped logic, an alternative that is rooted in immigrant lives and movements for justice.