Pillars of Salt: Pastoral Care with Adolescents with a Migration Experience

Abstract

“Lot’s wife looked back”. This detail in the migration journey of Lot and his family illustrates being caught in between needing to move forward but wanting to look back. Many adolescents who have migrated to Europe experience in-betweenness. This article begins from their reported practices of lived religion. This interpretive phenomenological analysis study brings together the domains of lived religion, migration theology, and adolescent development to better understand how pastoral care may address this liminal state. Looking at their descriptions of the presence and absence of important relationships, religious practices, and the experience of the divine shows the importance of these three areas working together. In the absence of strong proximal social relationships, many adolescents with a religious identity who have migrated to Europe turn their attention to the divine Godself. Releasing someone caught in between two places may require an awareness of the concepts of grief and loss, post-trauma theology, and skills in orienting and making social connections. One goal of pastoral care for adolescents who have experienced migration can be to provide a path out of the liminal in-between space to a place where there is room to flourish.

The Processes of Adaptation, Assimilation and Integration in the Country of Migration: A Psychosocial Perspective on Place Identity Changes

“…In this case the need for social reintegration arises, and in the absence of specific reintegration programs, migrants tend to return to the country of migration. For reintegration, a particular role is played by the church and the institutions in charge: On the one hand, the church, which comes with certain opportunities to support and develop spirituality and religion, lived through this creative problem-solving capacity [36], but also other institutions abroad, all of which have the role of limiting identity change, directly influencing identity dimensions; and on the other hand, the church and institutions in the country have an important role in reintegrating migrants into the family and community. In the absence of the involvement of the reference institutions in the lives of migrants, or the non-involvement of migrants in the activities carried out by them, identity changes definitely occur, with consequences at the individual and collective level.…”