Abstract
Migration has been an ever-present worldwide fact of life, but demographers are now referring to it as a new global phenomenon to highlight the increasing number of people who leave their homeland, by force or by choice, because of economic poverty, violence, war, and political and/or religious persecution, in search of better living conditions and freedom elsewhere, legally or illegally.1 Migration is a highly complex phenomenon,2 with significant economic, sociopolitical, cultural, and religious repercussions for the migrants, their native countries, and the host societies.3 It has been the subject of research in different disciplines, primarily sociology, anthropology, politics, and economics. Recently it has also engaged the attention of social ethicists4 and systematic theologians.5
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Notes
Part of this essay was previously published in Peter C. Phan, Christianity with an Asian Face: Asian American Theology in the Making (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2003), 3–25.
For a recent study of world migration, see Robin Cohen, ed., The Cambridge Survey of World Immigration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). Douglas S. Massey distinguishes four periods of international migration: the mercantile period (1500–1800), the industrial period (1800–1925), the period of limited migration (1925–1960), and the postindustrial period (1960–). This last period constitutes a sharp break with the past in that migration now is “a truly global phenomenon”: “Rather than being dominated by outflows from Europe to a handful of former colonies, immigration became a truly global phenomenon as the number and variety of both sending and receiving countries increased and the global supply of immigrants shifted from Europe to the developing world.”
For a discussion of the feasibility of a “grand theory” of immigration, especially to the United States, see Alejandro Portes, “Immigration Theory for a New Century: Some Problems and Opportunities,” in Hirschman, Kasinitz, and DeWind, The Handbook of International Migration, 21–33. Portes argues that a unifying theory purporting to explain the origins, processes, and outcomes of international migration would be so abstract as to be futile and vacuous. Rather he suggests that mid-level theories explaining the origins, flows, employment, and sociocultural adaptations of immigrants in specified areas are preferable to all-encompassing t heories. For furt her theoretical studies on migration, see David Guillet and Douglas Uzzell, eds., New Approaches to the Study of Migration, Rice University Studies 62, no. 3 (Houston: William Marsh Rice University, 1976), especially the essay by Sylvia Helen Forman, “Migration: A Problem in Conceptualization,” 25–35,
and Caroline B. Brettell and James F. Hollifield, eds., Migration Theory: Talking across Disciplines (New York and London: Routledge, 2000), especially chap. 5, Caroline Brettell, “Theorizing Migration in Anthropology: The Social Construction of Networks, Identities, Communities, and Globalscapes,” 97–123.
For the challenges of migration to ethics, see Dietmar Mieth and Lisa Sowle Cahill, eds., Migrants and Refugees (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1993). The editorial summarizes these challenges well: “Taken as a whole, and seen in its varied aspects, this topic [migration] represents a challenge to social ethics. The moral grounding of right and duties, the working out of a conception between autonomy and integration, the balancing out of the various claims and the consequences of structural help on the basis of the analysis of structural ‘sins,’ the conceptualization of prejudices and aggressions, the anthropological and ethical significance of the foreignness and a native land, all these are key themes for ethics” (vii). In this chapter, I will prescind from the ethical aspects of migration.
For a helpful work on refugees and immigrants in the United States, see Francesco Cordasco, ed., Dictionary of American Immigration History (Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, 1990).
A collection of older essays is still useful: George E. Pozzetta, ed., American Immigration & Ethnicity (New York: Garland Publishing, 1991). From the Catholic standpoint, there is a useful collection of primary sources on Asian American Catholics
in Joseph M. Burns, Ellen Skerret, and Joseph M. White, eds., Keeping Faith: European and Asian Catholic Immigrants (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2000), 229–307.
Allan Figueroa Deck, The Second Wave: Hispanic Ministry and the Evangelization of Cultures (New York: Paulist Press, 1989).
Anti-Asian immigration legislation culminated in the Tydings-McDuffe Act of 1934, which can be traced back as far as the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, the Gentlemen’s Agreement of 1908, and the 1917 and 1924 Immigration Acts. For an exposition of the American anxiety about the “Yellow Peril,” see David Palumbo-Liu, Asian/American: Historical Crossings of a Racial Frontier (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 31–42.
On the multicultural and intercultural character of contemporary theology, see the following works: Robert Schreiter, Constructing Local Theologies (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1985);
Robert Schreiter, The New Catholicity: Theology between the Global and the Local (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1997);
and Stephen B. Bevans, Models of Contextual Theology (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1992). It is well known that Hispanic/Latino theology, with its own professional association and journal, has emerged as a voice to be reckoned with. To a lesser extent, but in significant ways, Asian American theology has begun to contribute to the theological enterprise in the United States, thanks to the growing number of Asian and Asian American doctoral students.
On the first step of liberation theology, that is, concrete solidarity with the poor and the marginalized, see Leonardo Boff and Clodovis Boff, Introducing Liberation Theology, trans. Paul Burns (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1987), 1–6; and 22–24,
and Peter C. Phan, “Method in Liberation Theologies,” Theological Studies 61 (2000): 42–50. On the theology of “accompaniment,”
see Roberto Goizueta, Caminemos con Jésus: Toward a Hispanic/Latino Theology of Accompaniment (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1995), especially 1–46.
See Peter C. Phan and Jung Young Lee, ed., Journeys at the Margins: Toward an Autobiographical Theology in American-Asian Perspective (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1999), 113. For this understanding of marginality,
see Jung Young Lee, Marginality: The Key to Multicultural Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), 29–76.
See also Eugene Brody, ed., Behaviors in New Environments: Adaptation of Migrant Populations (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1979), especially Eugene Brody, “Migration and Adaptation,” 13–21
and Henry P. David, “Involuntary International Migration,” 73–95. A recent work developing an Asian American theology from the perspective of marginality is Sang Hyun Lee, From a Liminal Place: An Asian American Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2010).
This pred icament is not dissimila r to what Fernando Segov ia descr ibes in his evocatively titled essay, “Two Places and No Where on Which to Stand: Mixture and Otherness in Hispanic American theology,” in Mestizo Christianity: Theology from the Latino Experience, ed. Arturo L. Bañuelas (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1995), 29–43. From an anthropological point of view, this “in-betweenness” is equivalent to a liminal situation as described by Victor Turner. As such, “in-betweenness” intimates anomaly, insofar as people in liminality are no longer what they were (“neither-this”) nor are they yet what they will be (“nor-that”); however, they are not stuck in the present but project themselves toward the future (“beyond-this-and that”). They live between memory and imagination. On memory and imagination as two inseparable modes of doing theology, see Peter C. Phan, “Betwixt and Between: Doing Theology with Memory and Imagination,” in Phan and Lee, Journeys at the Margins, 113–133, and Elaine Padilla, “Border-Crossing and Exile: A Latina’s Theological Encounter with Shekhinah,” Cross Currents 60, no. 4 (December 2010): 526–548.
On the notion of “tiempos mixtos,” see Fernando Calderon, “America Latina, identidad y tempos mixtos, o cómo ser boliviano,” in Imagenes desconoscidas (Buenos Aires: CLASCO, 1988), 225–229.
This point has been made by María Pilar Aquino in “Theological Method in U.S. Latino/a Theology: Toward an Intercultural Theology for the Third Millennium,” in From the Heart of Our People: Latino/a Explorations in Catholic Systematic Theology, ed. Orlando Espín and Miguel H. Díaz (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1999), 24–25: “U.S. Latino/a theology may not renounce its intercultural cradle. This is a theology born within a reality where a number of religious traditions and several theological formulations converge. European, Latin American, European-American, Afro-Latin and African American, Native American, and feminist traditions and elaborations have been welcome and critically embraced.”
See Virgilio Elizondo, The Galilean Journey: The Mexican-American Promise (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1983); The Future Is Mestizo: Life Where Cultures Meet (Oak Park, IL: Meyer-Stone Books, 1988); original French edition, L’Avenir est au métissage (Paris: Nouvelleséditions Mame, 1987). See also his earlier two-volume work, Mestizaje: The Dialectic of Cultural Birth and the Gospel (San Antonio, TX: Mexican American Cultural Center, 1978), which is the English translation of his doctoral dissertation presented at the Institut Catholique, Paris, Métissage, Violence culturelle, Annonce de l’Évangile: La Dimension interculturelle de l’Évangelisation. It is interesting to note that the mixed race (mestizaje)—the raza cósmica—had been proposed by JoséVasconcelos as a new era of humanityoccurring in the Aesthetic Age. Such a raza cósmica, according to Vasconcelos, is already present in the peoples of Latin America in so far as they incorporate in themselves the Indian, European, and African races. See his The Cosmic Race/La raza cósmica, trans. with introduction by D. T. Jean (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979).
See in particular Gayraud S. Wilmore, Black Religion and Black Radicalism: An Interpretation of the Religious History of African Americans, 3rd ed. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, James H. Cones and Gayraud S. Wilmore, eds., Black Theology: A Documentary History, Volume I, 1966–79 (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1993),
and James H. Cones and Gayraud S. Wilmore, eds., Black Theology: A Documentary History, Volume 2, 1980–1992 (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1993).
Works that attempt to carry out this multipartnered theological dialogue include: Eleazar S. Fernandez and Fernando F. Segovia, eds., A Dream Unfinished: Theological Reflections on America from the Margins (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2001), which brings together African American, Asian American,
and Hispanic-Latino/a theological voices; and Anthony B. Pinn and Benjamin Valentin, eds., The Ties That Bind: African American and Hispanic American/Latino/a Theologies in Dialogue (New York: Continuum, 2001), which includes articles by African American theologians with responses from Latino/a theologians and vice versa. For reflections on ethnic theologies in the United States and a common methodology,
see Peter C. Phan, “Contemporary Theology and Inculturation in the United States,” in The Multicultural Church: A New Landscape in U.S. Church (New York: Paulist Press, 1996), 109–130, 176–192 and “A Common Journey, Different Paths, the Same Destination: Method in Liberation Theologies,” in Fernandez and Segovia, A Dream Unfinished, 129–151.
See Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977);
James Clifford, The Predicament of Culture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988);
George Marcus and Michael Fischer, Anthropology as Cultural Critique (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986);
Ulrich Beck, Risk Society: Toward a New Modernity (London: Sage, 1992);
Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 1994);
Jonathan Friedman, Cultural Identity and Global Process (London: Sage, 1994);
Mike Featherstone, Undoing Modernity: Globalization, Postmodernism and Identity (London: Sage, 1995);
Kathryn Tanner, Theories of Culture: A New Agenda for Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997).
Serge Gruzinski, La Colonisation de l’imaginaire: Sociétés indigènes et occidentalisation dans le Mexique espagnol XVIe–XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Gallimard, 1987). English translation, The Conquest of Mexico (Cambridge: Polity, 1993).
See Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith (New York: Pantheon Books, 1972); Discipline and Punish: The Birth of Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage Press, 1975); Critique and Power: Recasting the Foucault/Habermas Debate, ed. Michael Kelly (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994); Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Vintage Books, 1988); Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, ed. Donald Bouchard and trans. Donald Bouchard and Sherry Simon (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977); Power/Knowledge (New York: Pantheon Books, 1987); Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings, ed. Lawrence D. Kritzman and trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Routledge, 1988).
For a discussion of the historical development of globalization, see the works of Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System I: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century (New York: Academic, 1974) and The Modern World-System II: Mercantilism and the Consolidation of the European World-Economy, 1600–1750 (New York: Academic, 1980);
Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991);
and Roland Robertson, Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture (London: Sage, 1992). In general, Wallerstein attributes an exclusively economic origin to globalization, while Giddens sees it rooted in four factors, namely, the nation-state system, the world military order, the world capitalist economy, and the international division of labor, and Robertson highlights the cultural factors in globalization.
This hermeneutics of suspicion—inspired by the three great “masters of suspicion,” Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud—is a familiar feature of Latin American liberation theology and feminist theology. For the use of this hermeneutics in black Catholic theology, see M. Shawn Copeland, “Method in Emerging Black Catholic Theology,” in Taking Down Our Harps: Black Catholics in the United States, ed. Diana l. Hayes and Cyprian Davis (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1998), 128–129; and in Latino/a theology, see Aquino, “Theological Method in U.S. Latino/a Theology,” in From the Heart of Our People, 11–14.
Benjamin Schwarz, “The Diversity Myth: America’s Leading Export,” The Atlantic Monthly 275, no. 5 (May 1995), 60, quoted in Fernando Segovia, “Melting and Dreaming in America: Visions and Re-visions,” in Fernandez and Segovia, A Dream Unfinished, 242.
See Segovia, “Melting and Dreaming in America,” in A Dream Unfinished, 245–261. The works he examines are: Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society, revised and enlarged edition (New York and London: W. W. Norton & Co., 1998);
David Kennedy, “Can We Still Afford to Be a Nation of Immigrants,” The Atlantic Monthly 278, no. 5 (November 1996): 42–68;
and Samuel P. Huntington, “The Erosion of American National Interests,” Foreign Affairs 76, no. 5 (September–October 1997): 28–49.
See Clodovis Boff, Theory and Praxis: Epistemological Foundations, trans. Robert Barr (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1987) and Teoria do Método Teológico (Petropolis, Brazil: Vozes, 1998). For analysis of the three mediations of liberation theologies, of which intercultural theology is a subset,
see Peter C. Phan, “Method in Liberation Theologies,” Theological Studies 61 (2000): 40–63. Among liberation theologians the one most insistent upon the need for theology to dialogue with the social sciences is Juan Luis Segundo whose theological project is to dialogue with the social sciences to “deideologize” the customary interpretation of the Christian faith and its language that hide and legitimate oppression or social injustice. For a helpful collection of Segundo’s writings,
see Juan Luis Segundo, Signs of the Times: Theological Reflections, ed. Alfred Hennelly and trans. Robert Barr (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1993), especially his two essays “Theology and the Social Sciences” (7–17) and “The Shift Within Latin American Theology” (67–80). It is important to note that in the last-mentioned essay, Segundo was critical of his colleagues for having made the poor rather than the deideologizing of Christian tradition the primary locus or source of theology.
See Espín, The Faith of the People, 3: “historical and cultural studies had to be engaged, that the social sciences had to become partners in dialogue.” See also Copeland, “Method in Emerging Black Catholic Theology,” Taking Down Our Harps, 129–130. For further reflections on the relationships between theology and the social sciences, see Peter C. Phan, “Social Science and Ecclesiology: Cybernetics in Patrick Granfield’s Theology of the Church,” in Theology and the Social Sciences, ed. Michael H. Barnes (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2001), 59–87. Clearly, then, intercultural theology is by necessity a multidisciplinary enterprise. Furthermore, this dialogue of intercultural theology with the humanities must include philosophy as a partner, a point well argued by Alejandro García-Rivera, “The Whole and the Love of Difference: Latino Metaphysics as Cosmology,” in Espín and Díaz, From the Heart of Our People, 54–83.
See R. S. Sugirtharajah, ed., Voices from the Margin: Interpreting the Bible in the Third World (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1991).
See, for instance, Mark J. Cartledge and David Cheetham, ed., Intercultural Theology: Approaches and Themes (London: SCM Press, 2011);
Gemma Tulud Cruz, Intercultural Theology of Migration: Pilgrims in the Wilderness (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010);
María Pilar Aquino, ed., Feminist Intercultural Theology: Latina Explorations for a Just World (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2007);
George Newlands, The Transformative Imagination: Rethinking Intercultural Theology (Hampshire: Ashgate, 2004);
Frans Wijssen, ed., “Mission Is a Must”: Intercultural Theology and the Mission of the Church (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2002);
Richard Friedli et al., eds., Intercultural Perceptions and Prospects of World Christianity (New York: Peter Lang, 2010);
Claude Ozankom and Chibueze Udeani, eds., Theology in Intercultural Design: Interdisciplinary Challenges, Positions, Perspectives (New York: Rodopi, 2010);
and Orlando O. Espín, “Toward the Construction of an Intercultural Theology of (Catholic) Tradition,” in Grace and Humanness: Theological Reflections Because of Culture (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2007), 1–50.
The best one-volume study on migration is Graziano Battistella, ed., Migrazioni: Dizionario Socio- Pastorale (Milano: San Paolo, 2010). There is also an excellent trimester journal: International Journal of Migration Studies. On migration in Asia, see the works by Gemma Cruz, An Intercultural theology of Migration: Pilgrims in the Wilderness (Leiden: Brill, 2010),
and Fabio Baggio and Agnes Brazal, eds., Faith on the Move: Toward a Theology of Migration in Asia (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2008).
Two brief but helpful overviews of the developments of black and Latino/a theologies with bibliographies are available in Anthony Pinn, “Black Theology in Historical Perspective: Articulating the Quest for Subjectivity,” and Benjamin Valentin, “Strangers No More: An Introduction to, and an Interpretation of, U.S. Hispanic/Latino/a Theology,” and their mutual responses in Pinn and Valentin, The Ties That Bind, 23–57. Beside several anthologies on Latino/a theology, two analyses of Latino/a theology deserve mention: Eduardo C. Fernández, La Cosecha: Harvesting Contemporary United States Hispanic Theology (1972–1998) (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000),
and Miguel H. Díaz, On Being Human: U.S. Hispanic and Rahnerian Perspectives (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2001). For Asian American theologies, see Peter C. Phan and Jung Young Lee, eds., Journeys at the Margins, (with a selected bibliography);
Andrew Sung Park, Racial Conflict & Healing: An Asian-American Theological Perspective (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1966);
and Peter C. Phan, “The Dragon and the Eagle: Toward a Vietnamese-American Theology,” in Asian American Christianity: A Reader, Viji Nakka-Cammau and Timothy Tseng, eds. (Castro Valley, CA: ISAAC, 2009), 313–330.
See, for instance, Moises Santoval, On the Move: A History of the Hispanic Church in the United States (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1990);
and Jay Dolan and Allan Figueroa Deck, eds., The Notre Dame History of Hispanic Catholics in the U.S.: Issues and Concerns (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994). On the Iberian roots of Vietnamese Christianity,
see Peter C. Phan, Mission and Catechesis: Alexandre de Rhodes & Inculturation in Seventeenth-Century Vietnam (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1998).
See Hue-Tam Ho Tai, Radicalism and the Origins of the Vietnamese Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 52–53,
and David G. Marr, Vietnamese Tradition on Trial 1920–1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), 190–199.
The writings of Orlando Espínon popular Catholicism are well known. For a dialogue, between black and Hispanic theology on popular religion, see Dwight N. Hopkins, “Black Theology on God: The Divine in Black Popular Religion” and Harold J. Recinos, “Popular Religion, Political identity, and Life-Story Testimony in an Hispanic Community,” and their mutual responses, in Pinn and Valentin, The Ties That Bind, 99–132. For an excellent overview of Hispanic theology of popular Catholicism and critique, especially with regard to liturgical inculturation, see James L. Empereur, “Popular Religion and the Liturgy: The State of the Question,” Liturgical Ministry 7 (Summer 1998): 107–120;
Keith F. Pecklers, “Issues of Power and Access in Popular Religion,” Liturgical Ministry 7 (Summer 1998): 136–140;
Robert E. Wright, “Popular Religiosity: Review of Literature,” Liturgical Ministry 7 (Summer 1998): 141–146;
Arturo Pérez-Rodríguez, Popular Catholicism: A Hispanic Perspective (Washington, DC: The Pastoral Press, 1988);
and Arturo Pérez-Rodríguez, Primero Dios: Hispanic Liturgical Resource (Chicago: Liturgy Training Publications, 1997).
See Peter C. Phan, “Mary in Vietnamese Piety and Theology: A Contemporary Perspective,” in In Our Own Tongues: Perspectives from Asia on Mission and Inculturation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2004), 92–108.
See Peter C. Phan, “The Christ of Asia: An Essay on Jesus as the Eldest Son and Ancestor.” Studia Missionalia 45 (1996): 25–55; “Jesus the Christ with an Asian Face,” Theological Studies 57, no. 3 (1996): 399–430; “Jesus as the Eldest Brother and Ancestor? A Vietnamese Portrait.” The Living Light 33, no.1 (1996): 35–44; and “Culture and Liturgy: Ancestor Veneration as a Test Case,” in Phan, In Our own Tongues, 109–129.
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Phan, P.C. (2013). The Experience of Migration as Source of Intercultural Theology. In: Padilla, E., Phan, P.C. (eds) Contemporary Issues of Migration and Theology. Palgrave Macmillan’s Christianities of the World. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137031495_10
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