Families under stress

“Emigrating Families. Hopes and Challenges for the Church” has been the topic of the recent annual meeting of European pastoral migration experts that was held in Lyon on March 2-5. Fourteen cities were represented at the event: Barcelona, Basel, Brussels, Cologne, Dusseldorf, Geneva, Lucerne, Luxemburg, Lyon, Milan, Paris, Turin and Vienna. “The family issue – explains Laura Deponti of Cserpe (Studies and Research Centre for migration promoted by the Congregation of Scalabrin missionaries in 25 countries of the world) – is once again a core-debate in the church and society, also because of the deep transformations in family relations. The family plays a leading role in the decision of leaving to a foreign country to improve the living conditions of all the family members. Meanwhile, however, social uprooting and problems linked to migration have a strong impact on family ties: between husband and wife and parents and children”.Strong social discomfort. Participants to the Lyon meeting thoroughly discussed first of all the social and economic problems that migrants and refugees have to cope with. “An overview of the different European countries- Mrs. Deponti pinpoints – unveils different situations, but also common aspects. There are strong social disadvantages among newly arrived migrants, those without work permits and especially illegal ones. Foreign families must make do with low wages, uncertain jobs, poor dwellings, they are forced to live in precariousness, and are often afraid of repatriation.” “In most countries – with the exception Germany – illegal workers’ children are entitled to attend compulsory school, but have problems in continuing their studies and vocational training. The overall situation is that of schooling problems for second generations.”Youngsters between two cultural “worlds” . For Mrs. Deponti “migration laws and the labor market in Europe have a strong impact on the lives of migrant families. In some cases job opportunities lead to the separation of the family members or change the role between husband and wife- often women have more chances of finding jobs than men”. Thus ” determining a crisis in the relation between the couple and children.” “The Second generation, that is children who are born in the immigration Country, entails for the family the need for a dialogue and direct confrontation with the hosting society, questioning of its own values and traditions of origin”. Youngsters live in two cultural “worlds” – the expert adds-: their families’ culture and the one of their school, leisure time and friends”. “Even for Catholic families the issue is not easy: this is true both for the oldest migration groups (Italians, Portuguese…) and new Catholic immigrants (Latin-Americans, Africans, Philippines, and Christians from the Middle-East…..). This poses a big challenge for Pastoral migration structures: the transmission of faith to the migrants’ children, that are easily absorbed in the secularization process of all European youngsters”. Past and present. This transmission, Mrs. Deponti adds, “must be fueled by values of the faith of origin, but also enable youngsters to be Christians in a society which so deeply differs from that of their parents”. The theologian Michel Younès, academic at the Catholic Institute of Lyon himself of Lebanese origin, talked about “perpetual tension in immigrant families: between past and present, traditional and modern societies. This tension can represent a difficult stress to bear or a growth crisis, source of life. In the faith’s view, starting from the Bible, migration must not be considered as a merely painful situation but as God’s call – similar to Abraham’s – to Christian migrating families to testify a dynamic future involving also new generations”. “Keeping into account social and pastoral challenges and acknowledging migrant family’s richness of life, the representatives of migration in big European cities – Mrs. Deponti wraps-up – highlighted in the conference’s closing remark their commitment to sensitize local societies in their pastoral care for an always livelier catholicity inside the church”.