BCSSW, BC Law, and BC Continuing Education host inaugural Global Migration Conference

“The notion of human rights builds on our shared humanity. These rights are not derived from the citizenship of any country, or the membership of any nation, but are presumed to be claims or entitlements of every human being,” said BCSSW Dean Gautam N. Yadama, quoting Nobel Prize-winning economist and philosopher Amartya Sen. With those words, Yadama, with BC Law Dean Vincent Rougeau, welcomed attendees to the Boston College Global Migration Conference: Inclusion and Exclusion, held on April 11–12, 2019, at BC Law’s Newton Campus. “I know that we will be examining all these facets of human immigration today and tomorrow,” he continued. “We need the two professions of social work and law to advocate, temper, and champion the rights of the displaced and dispossessed.”

The conference, explained Rougeau, was the result of years of increased collaboration between BC Law and BCSSW and “reflects the higher goals that we have to join together the kind of extracurriculars and academic initiatives that build upon our Jesuit roots and values: academic excellence; respect for the dignity of all people, particularly the poor and marginalized; and a firm commitment to building a more just global society together.”

For two days, academics, policymakers, activists, refugee rights advocates, and mental health professionals from around the world examined the rise of exclusionary politics and considered how the fields of law and social work can shape and reform research, policy, and practice to protect the rights of migrants worldwide.

In the first of three plenary lectures, E. Tendayi Achiume, assistant professor of law at the UCLA School of Law; research associate of the African Center for Migration and Society at the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa; and the UN Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, spoke about the colonialist roots of borders and migration, and the implications of that history on the present and future in “De-Imperial Migration.”

“Most debates treat borders themselves as immovable facts,” said Achiume. Rather, she believes it is the movement and numbers of people—and governmental policies—that are debated and subjects of attention. Achiume argued that those borders, as determined by imperialism and empire-building, act as sites of injustice and inequality.

“Migration is responsive to political subordination,” said Achiume. “It is action that seeks to counter those imperial forces that curtail the self-determination of those who are dominated by them. A significant fraction of contested and unauthorized migration is best understood as de-imperial, and a failure to engage in it as such is to sustain the unjust operation of borders today.”

The second day of the conference began with the final plenary, “Humanitarian Responses to Migration,” a panel with Sean Callahan, president and CEO of Catholic Relief Services (CRS), and Thomas H. Smolich, S.J., the international director of Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS), moderated by Thomas Crea, assistant dean of global programs, associate professor, and chair of the global practice at BCSSW.

In a wide-ranging conversation about their roles, opinions, and experiences, Callahan and Smolich discussed the imperative of shifting the narrative. “We have a management crisis; a spiritual crisis; but seven billion people should be able to figure out a way of supporting 68 million people,” said Smolich. JRS, he explained, is focused on a long-term approach to education, protection, livelihood, and reconciliation. Callahan concurred: “We have a crisis of narrative. Eighty-five percent of refugees are in developing countries—they don’t come to the US. We have a protracted crisis of housing, shelter, education, and employment for long-term migrants who are increasingly living in cities, not camps. One of our big investments is helping people not to have to migrate—to change the narrative to young people being a power and an engine, not a problem. The false narrative is the crisis we face.” CRS, said Callahan, is working on a two-pronged approach: providing opportunities for refugees that enhance and benefit their country of residence, and assisting countries in crisis and avert the need for migration.

Callahan and Smolich talked about the need to balance immediate humanitarian aid with longer-term development aid. "Education, for example, acts as an immediate protection measure by keeping children safe, providing structure and a sense of normalcy while also providing preparation for the future,” said Smolich. They went on to discuss the role of faith in uniting communities in crisis, and their efforts to serve both the host community and refugees through such measures as building schools and housing and providing teacher training. “There’s a lot of thinking out there right now that says ‘If I give you a piece of the pie, I’m going to have less’; when, as a matter of fact, the pie is dynamic. By sharing and building, and by creating opportunities, cohesion, and rehabilitation, we move to an understanding that if we work through it, it benefits us all,” Smolich said.