The Limitations of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA): The Reality on the Ground

Santiago Martinez, Pedro (University of Kentucky) and Steve Pavey, Ph.D. (One Horizon Institute)

This poster explores the lived experience of undocumented immigrants in relation to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy announced on June 15, 2012. The research that informs this poster examines the following questions:  What are the diverse perspectives from the undocumented community of the meaning and impact of this policy?  What have the experiences been for DACA-eligible youth of the application process?  What are the opinions of the undocumented community of the potential impacts for change in their quality of life because of the DACA policy?  This research utilizes semi-structured interviews, participant observation, news articles and social media.

In July 2011, Dr. Steve Pavey published a book based on his ethnographic research of Hong Kong theologies embodied within the political-economic context of the Hong Kong transition from British to Chinese power.

Theologies of Power and Crisis: Envisioning / Embodying Christianity in Hong Kong
By Stephen Pavey

Book Description

Theologies of Power and Crisis provides a case study for Eric Wolf’s research directive to better comprehend the interplay of cultural (webs of meaning) and material (webs of power) forms of social life. More specifically, the book demonstrates how theological discourse and practice engage with historical and material relations of power. It has been normative to speak of power in terms of political and economic processes and theology in terms of interpretive and symbolic experiences. This work breaks new ground by linking theological ideas with political-economic processes in terms of the structural relations of power.

Ethnographically, this research investigates the theological processes of Hong Kong Chinese Christians during a period of significant social change and crisis, precipitated by the return of Hong Kong to China in 1997. It shows how local Christians and Christian institutions mediated the significant regional, national, and transnational forces of political-economic change by connecting theological practice to the structural relations of power. The Christian response was a contested process closely intertwined with the broader contested processes of social organization.

This study develops an understanding of Christianity that goes beyond ecclesiastical hegemony to encompass struggles over human practice, meaning, and representation in relation to the changing political-economic context. These findings implicate religious ideas and practice as significant to an understanding of social inequalities and powerlessness by connecting ideologies to material conditions. Christian ideas may be used to legitimize an oppressive social order or they may be used to liberate those who are oppressed. Issues related to the policies and practice of development should take seriously the role of religious beliefs and practices.

Endorsements & Review

“I was drawn to anthropology in the early 1980s through the work of such cutting-edge anthropologists/missiologists as Charles Kraft, Jacob Loewen, Charles Tabor, Alan Tippett, and Ralph Winter. While obviously influenced by these early innovators, Stephen Pavey is part of a new era of younger missiologically informed anthropologists. His ethnographic study of the church in Hong Kong is both anthropologically sound and missiologically important, and is a great addition to the small yet growing literature on the anthropology of Christianity.”

-Steven Ybarrola
Professor of Cultural Anthropology
Asbury Theological Seminary

“With Theologies of Power and Crisis Pavey successfully extends anthropological analysis to new realms as he contributes to our understanding of Christian Asia. He demonstrates the intellectual value of ethnography in our quest to understand the world around us. It is an excellent example of anthropology engaged in the world. Perhaps this work will teach and influence those involved with cross-cultural practices in a variety of settings.”

-from the afterword by John van Willigen
Professor Emeritus of Anthropology
University of Kentucky

Learn more or purchase at:

https://wipfandstock.com/store/Theologies_of_Power_and_Crisis_Envisioning__Embodying_Christianity_in_Hong_Kong

http://www.amazon.com/

Last November Koinonia Partners hosted its sixth School for Conversion, a weekend course centered on Christianity as a way of life, based on radical discipleship and community. This SFC was facilitated by Steve Pavey of Communality in Lexington, Kentucky, and also featured a session led by Anton Flores of Alterna in La Grange, Georgia. Both Steve and Anton wove the theme of immigration and the need for hospitality to and solidarity with migrants into the discussion of following Jesus.  Not only did the participants gain inspiration, but they also gave us life with joy and eagerness to pursue the Kingdom in our communities. You can join this conversation by reading School(s) for Conversion: 12 Marks of a New Monasticism edited by our friends at Rutba House.

Learn more at:

http://www.newmonasticism.org/index.php

http://www.koinoniapartners.org/index.html

Dr. Steve Pavey published a theological reflection on the immigrant youth right’s movement in the May/June 2011 issue of ESA’s PRISM magazine.  The article, “Out of the Shadows and Into the Light,” begins with a question asked by Howard Thurman in 1948:

What do the teachings of Jesus have to say “to those who stand with their backs against the wall?” asked Howard Thurman when addressing the African American experience of racism and violence of the 1940s. His answer and challenge, in his Jesus and the Disinherited, shaped the civil rights movement. The good news revealed in the teachings and life of Jesus is, wrote Thurman, “that fear, deception, and hatred, the three hounds of hell that track the trail of the disinherited, need have no dominion over them.” Jesus reveals the power of love, for self and others, that enables us to overcome relations of inequality that are perpetuated by fear, deception, and hate.

Fast forward 60 years to today’s growing nativism, xenophobia, and violence surrounding the presence of immigrants in the United States, and Thurman’s analysis of the lives of the disinherited is equally compelling here and now to those who have their backs against the wall. The experience of inequality and violence among immigrants is exacerbated for the 11.8 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States. Nearly 20 years ago anthropologist Leo Chavez described the “shadowed lives” of undocumented immigrants. With the growing public antipathy and the media construction of the “Latino threat,” living in the shadows remains an apt description and continues to be marked by the same fears and survival techniques of deception described by Thurman.

Steve ends the article with this missiological challenge:

“For us, the privileged and powerful, a radical conversion will mean discerning Jesus in the disinherited undocumented immigrants in our midst. We must repent of our anti-immigrant rhetoric and policy, seek a conversion of the broken immigration system that persecutes the immigrant community (in whom Jesus himself dwells), and begin to walk with our marginalized brothers and sisters, joining them in the light–– even as they experience a conversion from fear to freedom.”

2011 PRISM – May.June.2011

http://www.evangelicalsforsocialaction.org/page.aspx?pid=310