Who Is a Refugee?

For the sake of clarity in an unbelieving world, we might point to the definition of “refugee” as put forth by the United Nations:

Any person who, owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country, or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.[1]

According to the UN definition, it is not enough simply to be living in violent, warring, or troubling conditions to be considered a refugee. A person must be able to show that he is or legitimately fears being the subject of intentional persecution—usually based on race, religion, or caste.

However, the fact is most governments and judiciaries employ their own definitions to determine who qualifies as a refugee and who doesn’t. Needless to say, these classification systems are more convenient for the countries that write them than for the displaced who are bound to them. Expedient and opportune definitions grease the wheels for rejection of those seeking refugee status.

No Guatemalan suffering economic privation is likely to get refugee status, even if her need is as desperate as the family fleeing Aleppo, which is why our definitions fall short. A Sudanese man might not be threatened with the rifle barrel, but if he is held back from employment and is not given state welfare or any other means of providing for himself and his family, isn’t he equally forced from his home as the Tamil fleeing persecution?

In each case, people are compelled to move from one place to another to ensure basic survival. One is nudged by cash—or the lack of it—and famine and drought and the dissolution of society while the other is shoved along by Kalashnikovs.

There are fair distinctions between traditional refugees and economic migrants, but surely it is a blurred issue. Economic coercion and deprivation—manifested in segregation, employment discrimination, harassment, opportunity inequality, slavery, and the particular corruptions of both capitalist and socialist systems—are key tools of oppression everywhere one looks.[2] Starvation is no less deadly than the sword.

Whether the displaced migrate under the duress of persecution or extreme scarcity, all are the victims of a fallen world. Those running from bombs and those running from the brutality of markets or nature are equally evidence of cosmic brokenness. The reality of injustice—economic and social—is there for both, and so too the absence of peace.[3]

For the purpose of this series, I use the refugee tag broadly. It is not synonymous with other terms of the same family—IDP, stateless person, economic migrant—but for the Church, the characterization is pertinent and encompassing. Biblical depictions of aliens and sojourners speak to a wide spectrum of uprootedness, and I will use “refugee” in this larger sense.

Moving forward in this series, a refugee is any human uprooted from his or her home due to violence, persecution, deprivation, or disaster.

This series is about all migrants who travel because they feel they must, whether the coercive force is militant, economic, cultural, or a natural calamity. Biblically speaking, whether we call them aliens, strangers, sojourners, displaced persons, or foreigners, the Bible is a book running over with refugees forced to leave their homes and make lives for themselves, by years, lifetimes, and sometimes generations, in unknown lands. So too distinctions must evaporate for the Church today. The Bangladeshi maid and the Eritrean exile are equally refugees as the Pakistani schoolteacher and the Syrian boy who fled conscription.

By applying the term refugee broadly, one thing becomes obvious: the universal need for refuge.

[1] The definition comes from Article 1(A)(2) of the UN’s 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees.

[2] Ann E. Cudd. Analyzing Oppression. Oxford University Press. 2006. Cudd describes various forces of economic oppression. She speaks amidst a larger conversation about forms of oppression, including physical violence and psychological harm.

[3] Elizabeth G. Ferris. Beyond Borders: Refugees, Migrants and Human Rights in the Post-Cold War Era. WCC Publications, Geneva. 1993. p. xii-xiii). Ferris describes the question of refugees and migrants as both a justice issue and a peace issue.