Electing Citizens and Aliens: A Theology of Migration, Borders, and Belonging by Justin Parrish ...

252 Pages·2015·1.27 MB·English

by  Justin Ashworth

Electing Citizens and Aliens:
A Theology of Migration, Borders, and Belonging
by
Justin Parrish Ashworth
Date: __________________
Approved:
_______________________
Prof. Willie J. Jennings, Supervisor
_______________________
Prof. Stanley Hauerwas
_______________________
Prof. Edgardo Colón-Emeric
_______________________
Prof. Walter D. Mignolo
_______________________
Prof. Leo R. Chavez
Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Theology
in the Divinity School of Duke University

2015
Copyright by
Justin Parrish Ashworth
2015
Abstract
This work offers a theological reading of and response to migration restrictions in
the United States of America, focusing on their instantiation in the U.S.-Mexico border
and on the discourses and practices of citizenship and alienage that support these
arrangements. Unlike most works in Christian immigration ethics, this work not only
highlights the negative effects of migration policies, but also unearths the basic
assumptions grounding these policies, all while displaying the racial and theological
imaginaries grounding them.
The first part of this work argues that the assumption grounding all migration
policies is “the preferential option for one’s own people,” that is, the view that citizens
not only may but must prefer or prioritize the life of fellow citizens over that of non-
citizens. The first chapter draws on French theorist Michel Foucault and decolonial
intellectuals to offer a reading of three non-theological arguments for migration
restrictions, namely, security, economics, and culture. In short, those who believe the
U.S. must have migration restrictions believe that aliens may threaten the security,
economy, and culture—that is, the life—of citizens. The second chapter interrogates
theological arguments for national borders, the most visible way of restricting migration,
showing that ultimately theologians assume and assert the legitimacy of Westphalian
nation-state sovereignty. The third chapter offers a theological reading of the concrete
effects of border practices on “illegal aliens,” arguing that national borders will continue
to exist as long as citizens assume both that “our people” means “fellow citizens,” and
also that they may and must prefer and prioritize their life over that of others. The latter
assumption is particularly troubling because it implies that the insecurity, poverty, and
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cultural denigration that aliens face—though perhaps saddening—is ultimately just. The
central argument of the second, constructive part of this work is that Christians (and
others) should not prefer or prioritize fellow citizens over non-citizens. Chapter 4
discusses the nature and task of citizenship in light of the parable of the Merciful
Samaritan in Luke’s Gospel, and chapter 5 employs Hispanic theologians to articulate an
alternative account of faithful citizenship with undocumented Latina/o migrants.
The doctrine of election holds the dissertation together theologically. The first
part shows that the preferential option for one’s own people—even when proclaimed by a
theologian—is a secularized performance of the doctrine of election: citizens elect
themselves for life and belonging, but in so doing they damn the undocumented to death
and anxiety. The second part shows that God’s election of the Jews, favor for the poor,
and destiny of fellowship for the world sets Christians on a trajectory of border-crossing
solidarity that opposes the preferential option for one’s own and de-borders belonging.
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For Tiffany, Tommy, and Tomi — chirping birds
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Contents
Abstract .............................................................................................................................. iii
Contents ............................................................................................................................. vi
Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 1
Meeting Aliens ................................................................................................................ 1
Three Words on Words ................................................................................................. 16

PART ONE: BORDERING BELONGING ..................................................................... 18
Chapter 1: Choose Life: The Architecture of Migration Restriction ................................ 19
Introduction ................................................................................................................... 19
Arguments for Restriction: Security, Economics, and Culture ..................................... 21
Physical Security ....................................................................................................... 22
Economic Well-being ................................................................................................ 25
Cultural Integrity ....................................................................................................... 28
Summary .................................................................................................................... 30
The Biopolitical Logic of the Arguments: Liberation, Life, and Race ......................... 31
Liberation from Repression and Insecurity ............................................................... 32
The Politics of Sustaining and Cultivating Life ........................................................ 35
The Uses of Race ....................................................................................................... 41
The Racial Logic of the Arguments: Division, Subordination, and Norming .............. 42
The Geopolitics of National Distinctions .................................................................. 43
Subordination and Norming ...................................................................................... 50
Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 61

Chapter 2: Electing One’s Own: Sovereignty, Preference, and the Theology of Migration
Restriction ......................................................................................................................... 63
Introduction ................................................................................................................... 63
Asserting Sovereignty: Strangers No Longer ............................................................... 66
Grounding Sovereignty: Three Views........................................................................... 74
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Defining Sovereignty: Imagining Our Own .................................................................. 82
Secularizing Sovereignty: Electing Our Own ............................................................... 87
Conclusion: Assessing Sovereignty .............................................................................. 94

Chapter 3: The Dividing Wall of Hostility: Damning the Undocumented ....................... 99
Introduction ................................................................................................................... 99
The Damnation of Border Practices ............................................................................ 103
The Unseen Deadliness of the Border Apparatus ....................................................... 109
Deterrence, Death, and Violence ............................................................................. 109
Deportation, Detention, Exploitation, and Family Separation ................................ 114
Racialized Anxiety over Exclusion ............................................................................. 119
Two Stories of Belonging ........................................................................................ 123
Anxiety and Reprobation ......................................................................................... 127
The Moralism of Attempts to Make Borders More Humane ...................................... 129
Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 132

PART TWO: LIBERATING BELONGING .................................................................. 136
Chapter 4: Samaritan Citizenship: A Political Theology of Neighbor-Love .................. 137
Introduction ................................................................................................................. 137
The Ethics of Proximity in Augustinian Liberalism ................................................... 140
The Merciful Samaritan in Context ............................................................................. 145
Defining Nearness ....................................................................................................... 153
Proximity as Nature? ............................................................................................... 154
Segregated Proximity .............................................................................................. 158
The Nature of Proximity .......................................................................................... 160
Summary of Objections ........................................................................................... 166
Election and the Merciful Samaritan ........................................................................... 167
Predestined for Fellowship ...................................................................................... 170
Decision for the Poor ............................................................................................... 175
Samaritan Citizenship: Solidarity without Boundaries ............................................... 179
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Solidarity with the Vulnerable ................................................................................. 180
Solidarity in Boundary-Crossing Fellowship .......................................................... 183
Conclusion: Against the Preferential Option for One’s Own ..................................... 184

Chapter 5: Hacia una Iglesia Mezclada: De-Bordering Belonging................................ 186
Introduction: Toward a Fellowship of Co-Sufferers ................................................... 186
Virgilio Elizondo: The Election, Vocation, and Hope of Mestiza/os .......................... 191
The Promise and Problems of Elizondo’s Mestizaje ................................................... 197
Elected for Mezcolanza ............................................................................................... 204
The Election of Israel .............................................................................................. 204
Favoring the Poor .................................................................................................... 211
Notes toward De-Bordered Belonging ........................................................................ 217
Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 221

Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 223
Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 226
Biography ........................................................................................................................ 244
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Introduction

Meeting Aliens
I was thirty years old when I first met someone who had been deported. Or at
least that was the first time I was aware of such an encounter. How could I possibly have
avoided contact with deportees while growing up and living in Southern California
during the 1990s and early-2000s? Immigrants were a fixture of my schooling years: my
high school was one-third Hispanic, my college had student migrants and immigrants
from all over the world, and my seminary prided itself on being a Christian witness in a
diverse world. I had lived in Southern California cities where white people were barely
the demographic majority and I had spoken (broken) Spanish with coworkers at a
restaurant and a car dealership. Even stranger than the amount of time it took me to meet
a deportee is that I met this man in rural Guatemala, his place of birth. Why did it take me
thirty years and thousands of miles of travel to hear the story of someone who had been
deported?
And yet his deportation story was not new to me, and it would not be new to most
American citizens. I had heard such stories in the media, on the lips of family and friends,
and in books and newspaper articles. We all know the story. He had been pulled over by
a police officer for drunk driving. The officer soon found out that he was also driving
without a license. He was swiftly taken into custody, detained, tried, and sent back to
Guatemala. So clinical, so typical. His response to the incident was equally clinical: he
understood why he had been deported, given that he had broken the law and that the
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government had a right to punish lawbreakers. He felt that he should not have done what
he had done. I was unsurprised when he said he was planning to return to the U.S. and
that he should therefore prepare by speaking English, for we are told that migrants are
opportunistic birds in flight, wandering to and fro and learning the languages they must in
order to survive. I knew everything about this man. Or at least men like this man.
But in reality I didn’t know him. I had shut my eyes to the undocumented non-
citizens living and working and worshipping next to me. To be sure, non-citizens like him
often avoid contact with people who could get them in trouble with the police and sent to
a country they haven’t seen in years, often decades. It is no wonder that undocumented
non-citizens try to remain out of sight. But why do people like me avoid people like
them? It is as if I had willfully tried not to be bothered by the questions that so haunt
people like this man. Will I again have to keep quiet when my boss pays me less than I
deserve? Will la migra pound on my door today? Will I be stuffed into a filthy detention
center, humiliated in court, dragged to a country that I have not lived in for years? Will
this be the last day I see my family? I had never asked these questions or suffered the
anxieties of friends or family members who do. I had smelled and tasted the food of
people with these anxieties, heard their music, seen their clothing, even touched their
bodies—but never had I feared their fears or rejoiced in their joys. I didn’t know this
man. Nor even people like him.
This encounter shocked me, not only because I recognized how close to and far
from non-citizens I had always lived my life, but all the more because this man and I are
Christians. Before he told his story, we had been reading the same words from scripture,
singing the same songs, eating meals, sharing stories, praying, making jokes. Upon
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