‘QUIET DEFIANCE’, ‘RIGHTFUL PRESENCE’ AND ‘SHAKEN WELCOME’: TOWARDS A CONTEXTUAL THEOLOGY OF THE SOLIDARITY OF OTHERS IN AN ASYLUM DISPERSAL AREA EMERGING FROM DONCASTER CONVERSATION CLUB IN BALBY FOR REFUGEES AND ASYLUM SEEKERS

Abstract

My thesis examines how one traditional, majority-led charitable organisation, Doncaster Conversation Club (DCC), performs asylum and welcome in a town with its own unresolved tensions of loss and resentment. To achieve my ethical, methodological and theological goals of ensuring the epistemological priority of people seeking asylum, I developed research methods of open conversation and bricolage. I show how people seeking asylum express their marginalised social status in spatial metaphors associated with 'low' and 'down', and as obstacles which get in the way of, and cause discomfort to, citizens. Spatial metaphors highlight the contested and constrained nature of their presence. I turn instead to a xenophile theology of the solidarity of others in an asylum dispersal area which is not 'just any philanthropy' (Acts 28:2). It is not a theology of the innocent, or the presumed righteous, but an articulation, through transconfessional encounters, of a shaken thoughtfulness embedded in performances of welcome and asylum by those who recognise their own collusion in the structures, both historical and contemporary, which lead to the displacement of others. By prioritising the experiences of those who need to seek international protection and to receive welcome from compromised strangers, I articulate the basis for a 'theopoetics of shaken welcome'. This is the first study to apply a contextual theological model inspired by the approach of Andrew Shanks to the construction of 'asylum dispersal areas' for 'asylum seekers' in post-industrial towns. This theology begins in the middle of contested framings of the discourse of asylum-seeking, within a particular place and individual histories of displacement. It is developed as the 'solidarity of the shaken' which honours the experiences of people seeking asylum, and is enacted in the performance of 'quiet defiance', 'rightful presence' and 'shaken welcome'. A xenophile theology breaks open the boundaries of a single confessional container. I argue that the performance of shaken welcome can contribute to a contextual theology of asylum aimed at building stronger communities in Doncaster when 'stronger communities' are understood as inclusive groups who are capable of seeing the sameness in the other, and of creating a solidarity of others. My approach to decolonising DCC can help both churches and similar local refugee support organisations re-consider their language and policies.

Date of Award	31 Dec 2023
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The University of Manchester
Supervisor	RMS UnKnown (Supervisor)