Overview
Refugees and other displaced persons face immense barriers to full inclusion in their host communities. Faced with the twin crises of food and housing insecurity, they also live without basic health care, opportunities for education, legal support, and sustaining employment. Many have been victims of trauma and need mental health services. Often host communities know little or nothing about the culture(s) of displaced persons, and they are thus ill-equipped to provide support. What may have begun as a compassionate response to refugees easily devolves into a xenophobic demonization of them as the “other” who are perceived to threaten the host country’s way of life.
What can Jesuit colleges and universities do in response? The Universal Apostolic Preference to “walk with the poor, the outcasts of the world, those whose dignity has been violated, in a mission of reconciliation and justice” compels all IAJU members to respond in solidarity, and from the heart of our shared mission. Many IAJU schools have paved the way toward this kind of solidarity through academic programs, hospitality initiatives, service-learning, and focused research, but there is much more to be done. By committing together to solidarity with migrants and refugees and better coordinating our efforts, we can respond more effectively to the needs of our sisters and brothers and extend God’s compassionate hand more faithfully to them.
Resources
- IAJU Migration Research Directory.
- Principles of Engagement
- Best Practices for Solidarity with Migrants and Refugees
The IAJU Migration Research Directory provides faculty at Jesuit colleges and universities with a forum for collaborative research across schools and disciplines – and a means for making current scholarship accessible to those who need it most. Visit here.
Shared Principles for the inter-apostolic work of IAJU schools with Jesuit Refugee Service and other apostolates of the Society serving displaced persons. Download the document here.
Read our online magazine featuring 13 articles. Click to view the magazine.
View our promotional newsletter with article summaries. Click to view the newsletter.
Projects & Goals
The IAJU Task Force on Solidarity with Migrants and Refugees was assembled with the objective of helping every institution of Jesuit higher education to make a serious, articulated commitment to the wellbeing of migrants and refugees, in the context of their institution’s local realities and strengths.
The following three Demonstration Projects are by no means exhaustive. Rather, they are meant to inspire creativity on how solidarity can be expressed by Jesuit schools, and how partnership with other Jesuit apostolates can enrich those commitments. The projects include:
By creating links between Jesuit universities in Mexico and the United States, Jesuit Refugee Service, Jesuit Migrant Service (Mexico) and Catholic Charities, important collaborative projects have been initiated and sustained. Through them, migrants and refugees now have access to psychosocial, pastoral, medical, legal, and other resources to ease their burdens – and Jesuit university graduate and undergraduate students are privileged to learn from the experiences of displaced persons at shelters, meal programs, legal clinics, and other refugee-serving projects along the U.S.-Mexico border. Well beyond the concept of service-learning projects, these encounters are changing the universities’ understanding of their curricula and potential for solidarity.
Hospitality is a value that has mobilized the work of our universities in Spain and Latin America. Hospitalidad.es and SoyH are two clear examples of how universities have joined with the apostolates of other sectors to provide a stable community, practical experience, and wrap-around care for migrants and refugees. The project engages faculty, staff and students in university-wide service and solidarity, a model that has been adapted by other Jesuit universities.
Jesuit university scholars have pursued extensive research on the attitudes of Catholics toward migrants and refugees, based on race, class, ethnicity, education, and income – and are now expanding their country-specific research to include international data sets. Outcomes, to date, demonstrate a discontinuity between Catholicism’s historic support of displaced person and current attitudes among those who identify as Catholic. Knowing what drives negative attitudes toward refugees and migrants can be the first step in creating resources for faith communities, civic leaders, and others to combat xenophobia.
