Die auch heute noch existierende Praxis des Kirchenasyls bildet den Fokus des Vortrags „‚Wir haben unsere eigenen Grenzen‘: Migration, Sanctuary and the Boundaries of the Theological-Political“ von Noor Amr (Doktorandin, Stanford), zu dem der Lehrbereich Politische Wissenschaft Koblenz einlädt. Darin geht es um die Rechtfertigungen von Kirchenasyl über Religionsgrenzen hinweg wie auch in einer säkularisierten Umwelt sowie um die Grenzen, die dabei verhandelt werden. Der Vortrag findet statt in englischer Sprache am Dienstag, den 04.06.2024, um 18:15 Uhr
in Raum E313. Interessierte sind herzlich eingeladen.

„Wir haben unsere eigenen Grenzen”: Migration, Sanctuary and the Boundaries of the Theological-Political

Rooted in the medieval practice of Christian sanctuary for persons fleeing persecution, the practice of Kirchenasyl remains formidable in Germany today as a means of protecting rejected asylum-seekers pending deportation. Based on a 2015 informal agreement between the Federal Migration Office (BAMF) and representatives of the Catholic and Protestant churches, Kirchenasyl is permitted in Germany according to a mutually agreed-upon set of criteria. This includes a requirement for churches to send BAMF a dossier detailing why a specific asylum-seeker’s deportation would result in particular hardship (besonderer Härtefall). But how do asylum-seekers from different religious, ethnic/national, and linguistic backgrounds identify a sanctuary church, and by what rhetorical means do they convince a pastor, priest, or nun to take them in? What are the criteria that various churches use to determine what counts as particular hardship? And what does it mean for the normative force of Christian moral argumentation to remain salient within the ostensibly secular, bureaucratic management of migration? Through 1.5 years of (ongoing) ethnographic fieldwork accompanying migrants in sanctuary churches, Noor Amr traces the boundaries of sanctuary as a means of understanding how various „borders“ (e.g. EU/non-EU, Germany/Eastern Europe, church/state) interact in the complex and legally perplexing practice of contemporary church asylum. Drawing on a common phrase used by those who offer sanctuary–„wir haben unsere eigenen Grenzen“–she seeks to elucidate how the boundaries of the theological-political are being internally retraced at a time when border externalization has become increasingly normalized as a matter of EU policy.

Noor Amr is a PhD Candidate in Anthropology at Stanford University and a Visiting Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity. In her research on the modern German sanctuary movement, her work concerns the boundaries between hospitality and carcerality, sanctuary and sovereignty, and the theological and political. She holds a Bachelors in Politics from Willamette University and a Master of Theological Studies (MTS) in Philosophy of Religion from Harvard Divinity School.

Vortrag in englischer Sprache

Der Vortrag findet am 04.06.2024 um 18:15 Uhr im Raum E313 statt.

Lehrbereich Politische Wissenschaft
Institut für Kulturwissenschaft
Universität Koblenz