Strangers in a foreign land; a study of the Christian missionary response to refugees in Greece and Italy
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2018-07-31
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en
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Since the European refugee crisis began in 2015, Christian missionaries have responded in higher numbers to Greece than Italy despite high numbers of asylum-seekers in both nations. Based on associations made with “political refugees” in Greece and “economic migrants” in Italy, this paper seeks to discover if political vs. economic motivations of refugees are a driving factor in missionary response to the crisis. While conducting my research within the organization, Youth With A Mission (YWAM), I used a mixed-method approach to triangulate data from semi-structured interviews, a digital survey, and user-content posted to the YWAM Refugee Circle Facebook page. Though the response to political vs. economic refugees is slightly evident among missionaries in Greece, the results show that: 1.) missional identity (or the “call” of God) is foundational to missionary response in both locations, but that 2.) the demographic attributes of asylum-seekers—specifically Muslims and people from the Middle East—and 3.) the catalytic role of (social) media have pulled more missionaries to Greece than Italy.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen