‘Humanitarianism from Below’
No matter their individual views on the subject, Americans need to understand something about immigration, says Boston College School of Social Work Assistant Professor Alejandro Olayo-Méndez, S.J.: Migration itself is not a problem, but the way immigration policies are developed and implemented is—and whatever policies the United States enacts, immigration to the U.S.-Mexican border will never cease.
“It may be more difficult for migrants to cross into the U.S., and the numbers have certainly gone down recently, but the push factors don’t stop,” explained Fr. Olayo-Méndez. “The experience of poverty and violence which compels people to leave their countries in search of a better life is what ultimately determines the extent of attempted immigration to the border. Until and unless those things change, at some point the numbers will pick up.”
Given that migration patterns and populations changed over time—besides people heading to the U.S. border, there are also Mexican deportees from the U.S. as well as asylum seekers and internally displaced persons (IDPs) staying in Mexico—it is vital to understand how various agencies, groups, and other entities provide humanitarian aid to such an increasingly diverse population with equally distinct needs, he said. Large international organizations such as the Red Cross, Doctors without Borders, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees may readily come to mind, but Fr. Olayo-Méndez points to an overlooked yet key grassroots resource: “casas de migrantes,” or migrant shelters.
In his newly published book, Humanitarianism from Below: Faith, Welfare, and the Role of Casas de Migrantes in Mexico, Fr. Olayo-Méndez describes how these shelters—more than 150 in all—have emerged as an informal welfare system by providing temporary living quarters, organizing food preparation and water distribution, and offering childcare, legal assistance, and money transfer services, among other needs. Because many of the organizations running the shelters are faith-based, sponsored by local Catholic parishes or congregations from other religious denominations, he notes, they are often perceived as doing “charity work” instead of operating a professional humanitarian operation—an assessment that minimizes the value, and overlooks the adaptability, of casas de migrantes.
“During the more than 30 years these shelters have been operating, they have displayed a great ability to change as needed,” said Fr. Olayo-Méndez, a native of Mexico City who spent some two years traveling along migration routes to learn how migrants move and how they interact with the shelters. “They have been able to recognize and respond to migrant trends: At one point they might have been largely serving single men; then they were seeing an increase of women with children more often; and then there were more diverse populations arriving. So they would say, ‘OK, we need a playground for kids’ or ‘We need a dormitory just for women.’
“In contrast to the ‘humanitarianism from above’ that we are most familiar with, the casas de migrantes are an example of what I theorize as ‘humanitarianism from below’: deeply humane and local, existing within formal and informal organizational structures, self-sustained and adaptable.”
Fr. Olayo-Méndez provides a look at the day-to-day operations of casas de migrantes and how the various services they provide—sometimes in the midst of violence, natural disasters, and health crises like COVID—become a vital lifeline for migrants, deportees, IDPs, and others in need. As delays in processing immigration and asylum applications have stretched longer, so has the amount of time migrants remain in the casas, he said: What was usually a one- or two-night stay, or perhaps a week, now stretches upwards of six or seven months.
“Obviously, this affects the casas’ operation, because now they must provide resources on a longer-term basis. But how do you administer the resources when you own so few of them? So they broker with the larger community, try to link with local churches, for instance, or international agencies. There is a lot of learning on the fly, but the casas have been able to rise to the occasion.”
'Migration itself is not a problem, but the way immigration policies are developed and implemented is,' says Alejandro Olayo-Méndez, S.J. (Lee Pellegrini)
Fr. Olayo-Méndez provides a look at the day-to-day operations of casas de migrantes and how the various services they provide—sometimes in the midst of violence, natural disasters, and health crises like COVID—become a vital lifeline for migrants, deportees, IDPs, and others in need. As delays in processing immigration and asylum applications have stretched longer, so has the amount of time migrants remain in the casas, he said: What was usually a one- or two-night stay, or perhaps a week, now stretches upwards of six or seven months.
“Obviously, this affects the casas’ operation, because now they must provide resources on a longer-term basis. But how do you administer the resources when you own so few of them? So they broker with the larger community, try to link with local churches, for instance, or international agencies. There is a lot of learning on the fly, but the casas have been able to rise to the occasion.”
As part of a complex “humanitarian ecosystem” of various actors, said Fr. Olayo-Méndez, casas de migrantes contend with the issue of containment versus welfare, a dynamic common to most all humanitarian-related work. Simply put, he explained, casas and other aid providers must exert control over how their services and resources are distributed, which means that persons who use them must abide by certain rules and conditions—such as helping with cleaning and other chores—or face expulsion. Many shelters forbid residents to leave the premises because of security concerns.
In a wider context, Fr. Olayo-Méndez points out that the casas themselves are often part of a wider containment-vs.-welfare scenario. State and local authorities, which normally might have to aid the migrants, aren’t allowed to visit or oversee the shelters but find it convenient for them to be the point of focus: The casas are essentially assuming the authorities’ role of providing welfare while also asserting containment over the migrants.
“Any humanitarian action has political dimensions, no matter who’s involved,” he said. “Care and control are intertwined in the shelters’ operation.”
Throughout Humanitarianism from Below, Fr. Olayo-Méndez includes the voices and experiences of individual shelter representatives as well as migrant residents whom he encountered on his travels.
Norma, leader of Las Patronas, recounted how one night she and her sister helped several migrants rescue a companion with a severe gunshot wound suffered during a robbery attempt. “I knew I needed to serve them,” she said. “But it was at that moment, I knew that in helping them, I was helping Christ.”
At a shelter in northern Mexico, he observed how staff and residents reacted to the death of a 58-year-old Honduran man who had died while watching television. The other migrants prayed and sang for him, even after the body was removed, and later a Mass was held.
“At least he did not die like a dog on the street, alone and with no one to take care of him,” said Padre Toño, the shelter director.
Victor, a 27-year-old from Guatemala Fr. Olayo-Méndez met at a shelter about 186 miles from the U.S. border, described his 60-day, 1,380-mile journey by foot, sometimes by public transportation or on top of freight trains, and how he panhandled or relied on food donations.
“Thanks be to God and the people of goodwill who have fed us along the way,” said Victor. “For the most part, nobody denies food to you. However, people do not want to give you money anymore.”
As a Jesuit priest, Fr. Olayo-Méndez felt called as part of his pastoral duty to be present and observe and listen at the source in researching migration-related subjects: “I am who I am because I have stayed with migrants and the people who work with them. They have transformed and nurtured me.”
But he found that maintaining a professional detachment from the sheer emotional impact of such experiences was difficult in ways he hadn’t expected.
“Usually, the concern is that one will feel too deeply. But last year, after I went to the border and heard about the terrible, heartbreaking cruelty and violence so many people had endured, I found that I was actually too distant. ‘I should be enraged!’ I thought to myself. So I found some professional support to help me deal with this experience.”
Fr. Olayo-Méndez, who has taken graduate and undergraduate students to the U.S.-Mexican border as part of his classes, said that he continues to be amazed, and inspired, by what he hears from migrants.
“The faith of these people puts me to shame, even as a priest. In spite of what they’ve been through, even though they know that getting into the U.S. and staying there will likely be very difficult, they fully believe that there is goodness in the world and in people.”