"They eat strange food, don't they?" A Historical Perspective on Migration
In 1557 there were more refugees in Geneva than Genevan-born inhabitants, and all thirteen Calvinist pastors were non-Genevans. As a result, employment and housing shortages fuelled resentment towards these foreign migrants. They were not easily integrated into the community, frequently forming their own language-based church congregations, and were never reliable tenants (with limited financial means and liable to return to their homelands with little notice)
Europe’s own historical experience of divinely inspired migration is frequently overlooked in the current debates about Christian responses to migrants in Europe. Missiologist Andrew Walls was one of the first to write about the European missionary enterprise and make reference to it as a form of European emigration. He compares the history of missionary migration from Europe to the growing number of recently colonized lands with the present migration to Europe by non-western missionaries who have arrived there to evangelise its citizens. Walls has described this as a “great reversal”
The Huguenots were French Protestants of the 17th century, who suffered terrible persecution under Louis XIV after he revoked the 1598 Edict of Nantes in 1685. Religious freedoms were removed with the result that an estimated 200,000 Huguenots emigrated to countries in non-Catholic Europe, including the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Scandinavia, and even Russia.
Approximately 50,000 settled in England, introducing the word ‘refugee’ to the English language. English pamphlet literature of the period warned of the threat the Huguenots posed to the employment market, public order and morality. They were felt to have poor standards of personal hygiene and of housing. Some pamphlet writers even pointed out that they ate strange food!
The Geneva Bible is a triumph of English biblical scholarship, achieved by migrant Protestants living in exile in Geneva. Led by Coverdale and John Knox and working under the influence of the migrant John Calvin, the Geneva Bible project contributed directly to the text of the later Authorised Version (1611). Its title page features a print of the Israelites about to cross the Red Sea, hinting at their self-understanding as a migrant community in Geneva (see above).
A historical perspective encourages us to ask why, as one recent commentator noted:
‘…there is little or no historical depth to the narrative: migration is presented as something new and unprecedented, even though history offers a plethora of previous cases….and regional and national perspectives predominate at the expense of what could be a European narrative.’
Sturm-Martin, www.eurozine.com, 2012
The contemporary idea of ‘Europe’ cannot be conceived without reference to its history of migration and migrants. Many generations later, the fair-haired descendants of the Vikings of Sweden do not consider themselves Swedish but self-identify as ‘English’, ‘Dutch’, or ‘German’. Despite many exceptions, the history of European migration can be told as a series of narratives of integration in which the Christian community has played a significant role.
When in 1984 the Council of Europe recognized the importance of European pilgrim routes, such as the medieval ‘Pilgrim’s Way’ to Santiago do Compostela, it was acknowledging that the cultural contacts resulting from historical Christian pilgrimage and migration represented one of the earliest approaches to interculturalism and cultural integration.
Darrell Jackson