This article was downloaded by: [1 University of New Mexico] On: 18 November 2009 Access details: Access Details: [subscription number 906868086] Publisher Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 3741 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Howard Journal of Communications Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713771688 “Bringing New Hope and New Life”: The Rhetoric of Faith-Based Refugee Resettlement Agencies Sara L. McKinnon a a Department of Communication & Journalism, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA To cite this Article McKinnon, Sara L.'“Bringing New Hope and New Life”: The Rhetoric of Faith-Based Refugee Resettlement Agencies', Howard Journal of Communications, 20: 4, 313 — 332 To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/10646170903300747 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10646170903300747 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf This article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material. The Howard Journal of Communications, 20:313–332, 2009 Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 1064-6175 print=1096-4649 online DOI: 10.1080/10646170903300747 ‘‘Bringing New Hope and New Life’’: The Rhetoric of Faith-Based Refugee Resettlement Agencies SARA L. McKINNON Downloaded By: [1 University of New Mexico] At: 17:58 18 November 2009 Department of Communication & Journalism, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA Faith-based organizations play an important role in the resettlement of refugees in the United States, though little is known about the function of faith in the organizations’ assistance of refugees. Most literature about refugees also fails to attend to the intersubjectivity between refugees and other individuals or groups, focusing instead on a singular subject or group identity. This article bridges these gaps by rhetorically analyzing the ways faith-based organizations construct the subject positions of refugees and volunteers on their websites in order to draw volunteers and donors to support the organizations. Guided by theories concerning recognition and subjectivity, this article demonstrates that faith-based groups rely on dichotomized constructions of subjectivity where volunteers are positioned as full actors in the lives of refugees, and refugees are positioned as immobile in their own lives. The texts also produce (mis)recognition of the intersubjectivity of refugees and volunteers through deployments of discourses of difference and sameness. Not only do these constructions call volunteers to serve because they are positioned as full agents of change and upholders of Christian goodness, but the constructions maintain a modernist worldview of people, places, and events as autonomous and stable. An earlier version of this article was presented at the National Communication Association Conference, November 2006, San Antonio. I thank Karma Chávez, Daniel C. Brouwer, John Hammerback, Carolyn Stroman and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions in crafting this article. Address correspondence to Dr. Sara L. McKinnon, Department of Communication and Journalism, University of New Mexico, MSC03 2240, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87131. E-mail: slmckin@unm.edu 313 314 S. L. McKinnon Downloaded By: [1 University of New Mexico] At: 17:58 18 November 2009 KEYTERMS internet messages, intersubjectivity, recognition, refugees, religion, subjectivity Faith-based organizations have long been involved in resettling refugees in the United States. Formal U.S. refugee resettlement programs began as an outcome of World War II mass displacement, with President Truman framing the programs as the nation’s part in ‘‘doing its fair share’’ to help people in need; immediately U.S. churches responded by sponsoring individuals and families. Contextualized within this history, it is perhaps surprising that although communication scholarship attends to refugees’ acculturation (Kim, 1978) and identity construction (McKinnon, 2008; Witteborn, 2004) as well as the resource allocation for refugees (Conquergood, 1998), the function of faith in resettlement has been largely unstudied. Yet faith-based resettlement agencies, once organized on a volunteer basis, are now comprehensive not-for-profit organizations that receive annual federal funding in the millions of dollars to help newly resettled refugees find housing and jobs, learn new skills, go to school and build social networks.1 These organizations also still rely on the generous support of private individuals and groups to maintain their services to refugees (Administration for Children and Families [ACF], 2008). To garner the financial support and volunteer workers needed in their work, faith-based resettlement organizations have increasingly relied on the Internet (Finn, 1999; D. V. Shah, Kwak, & Holbert, 2001). This shift in publicizing enables faith-based groups to serve refugees better, but it also grants them the power to represent refugees as well as volunteers in certain ways. In this article, I examine the rhetorical strategies, religious or otherwise, that faith-based groups use in representing refugees and volunteers. This rhetoric is worthy of analysis because these messages may be the only information volunteers have about refugees before they begin their work, shaping the ways volunteers recognize refugees as subjects and defining the role of volunteers and refugees in the process of resettlement. These messages also represent the orientation of faith-based organizations toward the refugees they serve. As Jessica Benjamin (1998) noted, recognition functions most ideally and humanely when subjects understand their intersubjectivity with others without reducing or denying the similarities and differences that co-constitute subjectivity. Yet such ideal functioning is not inherent in the process of recognition. My concern here is that the faith-based messages provide but a narrow possibility for their audiences of potential volunteers to recognize their intersubjectivity with the individuals to whom they are called to ‘‘bring new hope.’’ With this concern in mind I consider the following questions: How are refugees and potential volunteers=donors recognized by faith-based refugee resettlement organizations? How does Downloaded By: [1 University of New Mexico] At: 17:58 18 November 2009 Bringing New Hope 315 such recognition reflect the ideological assumptions of the organizations? And, what might such normative assumptions mean for incoming refugees resettled through these organizations? What follows is a brief framing of U.S. refugee resettlement and the theoretical framework of recognition and subjectivity; this section of the article is guided primarily by the work of prominent psychoanalytic theorist Jessica Benjamin (1998) and renowned post-structuralist philosopher Judith Butler (2004b) who both foreground questions of recognition in their theorizing of intersubjectivity. Next, the method of inquiry and the texts used in the analysis are described and an analysis of the rhetorical constructions of refugees and aid-providers in the mediated text is then presented. The article concludes by discussing the implications of faith-based organizations as the primary service-workers for refugees resettling in the United States. RESEARCHING REFUGEE RESETTLEMENT According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), there are upwards of 17 million refugees in the world now, 1.8 million of whom reside in the United States (UNHCR, 2004). This number includes Yugoslavians displaced in the 1990 s; Cubans, Cambodians, Hmong, and Vietnamese fleeing wars of the 1960 s and 1970 s; and Soviet Jews from World War II among others (Gold, 1992, p. 3). The United States did not distinguish between immigrants and refugees until 1948, when Congress enacted the Displaced Persons Act of 1948 to aid persons after World War II (Holman, 1996, p. 5). Along with the distinction between immigrants and refugees, the Displaced Persons Act set a national precedent of only admitting refugees dislocated by Communism. The Refugee Act of 1980 changed the exclusively Communist definition, adopting the UNHCR’s refugee definition and the 1967 UN Protocol with an added clause of when there is ‘‘special humanitarian concern to the United States’’ (Holman, 1996, p. 14). The Refugee Act also allotted services such as care of unaccompanied minors and social services including language classes, employment training, and medical care. Resettlement agencies offer these services, and much of the work falls to un-paid volunteers. Communication scholars have abundantly examined the dynamics that immigrants and refugees negotiate in migrating to the United States. Intercultural communication studies primarily focus on the transitional processes of cultural adaptation and acculturation that immigrant and refugee groups navigate in migrating to different countries (see Kim, 2005). Another direction of analysis is the impact of discourses on the migrant experience, including interrogations of identity and the negotiation of messages and perceptions (Burman, 2006; Carrillo Rowe, 2004b; Conquergood, 1992a, 1992b, Downloaded By: [1 University of New Mexico] At: 17:58 18 November 2009 316 S. L. McKinnon 1998; Drzeweicka & Nakayama, 1998; Dsilva & Whyte, 1998; Hall, KeaneDawes, & Rodriguez, 2004; Hegde, 2000; Keshishian, 2000; Lu, 2001; Lum, 1991; McKinnon, 2008; Regis, 1989=1990; Witteborn, 2004). Rhetorical scholars also contribute to our understanding of migration by investigating the rhetorical dynamics present in immigration policy and legislation (Beasley, 2006; Carrillo Rowe, 2004a; Demo, 2004, 2005; Dorsey, 2003; Hasian & Delgado, 1998; Holling, 2006; Ono & Sloop, 2002; Parry-Giles, 1988). Relatedly, communication scholars interrogate dominant discourses concerning immigrants and refugees that circulate in everyday society through various communication channels including mediated messages and conversation (Flores, 2003; McKinnon, 2007; Mehan, 1997; Munshi, 1998; Ono & Sloop, 2002; Salwen & Matera, 1997; Santa Ana, 1999; H. Shah, 1999). This scholarship reveals much about the subjugation of refugees and immigrants through dominant U.S. discourses, and yet in most instances the refugee or immigrant is the isolated figure or group of analysis. This study contributes to this rich scholarship by examining another source of rhetoric that constitutes the experiences of refugees and immigrants living in the United States: the volunteer organizations whose sole purpose is to assist them in transitioning to life in the United States. This text also goes past the isolated subject of analysis by examining how refugees and volunteers are relationally constructed through particular rhetorics that attract volunteers and donors to serve. THEORIZING RECOGNITION Analyses of recognition examine the way certain subjects comprehend themselves as intersubjective to an other. Recognition de-centers the singular subject in that the intersubjectivity between a subject and an other is formulated as the core of understanding and ethical communication.2 Subjects must understand themselves as reflections of one another; the reflection comes to constitute the silent component of the relationship, determining how a self and an other will appear to each other (Benjamin, 1998; Jovanic & Wood, 2004). We do not merely see an other but recognize an other in relation to ourselves and the relationship between the two selves.3 Recognition happens when both figures acknowledge their intersubjectivity and engage with one another as full subjects. When recognition does not happen one result is assimilation, which disregards alterity, privileging instead an integration of subjectivity that reduces ‘‘difference to sameness’’ (Benjamin, 1994, p. 234). In this relationship, the other is distinguished only for her=his sameness to the other subject. Additionally, the other remains unrecognizable to the subject when a subject cannot acknowledge his=her intersubjectivity with the other. This lack of acknowledgement occurs when a subject discursively figures an other as indeterminately and radically different than the subject him=herself. Bringing New Hope 317 Downloaded By: [1 University of New Mexico] At: 17:58 18 November 2009 Thus, the central tension of recognition is balancing between not absorbing difference into sameness, while still recognizing and allowing for connectivity. One extreme is assimilation while the other extreme is radical separateness. So in statements such as ‘‘you are just like me’’ or ‘‘we are all the same in the end,’’ we fail to recognize that a we is already present that is different than you or I; this we is always previously constituting the recognition between a self and an other. Conversely, when we express ‘‘I am not connected to this person, we are totally different’’ or ‘‘What I do here does not impact what happens over there,’’ we deny the ways that we are always intersubjectively bound to=by others. The intersubjectivity of recognition involves mindfulness to the historicity constituting the relation between subjects. Butler (2004b) explained why readers should understand recognition as historically provisional: When we consider that the relations by which we are defined are not dyadic, but always refer to a historical legacy and futural horizon that is not contained by the Other, but which constitutes something like the Other of the Other, then it seems to follow that who we ‘‘are’’ fundamentally is a subject in a temporal chain of desire that only occasionally and provisionally assumes the form of the dyad. (p. 151) When we meet someone, they bring with them both who they were before us and who they will be with and after us. Thus, part of the constituting relationship is the historical and futural connections between a self and other. Recognition is approached when subjects comprehend the ways that they, not only in the present, but historically and in the future, are intersubjectively bound. While full recognition is only ever approached, subjects must move toward it with the understanding that when they recognize an other through this frame, they approach recognition of self. In this vein, Butler (2004b) urged for what postcolonial theorists posit; part of recognition comes in understanding what is always outside of the realm of understanding— specifically those historical, geopolitical, and geographical ‘‘legacies’’ and ‘‘horizons’’—constitute one’s subject position (Davis, 2002, p. 48). From this perspective, recognition means mindfulness to what is always (un)recognizable, never quite knowable, but always constituting the ‘‘other of the other.’’ METHOD OF ANALYSIS In what follows, Jasinski’s (2001) theory-driven rhetorical analysis is used to examine the ways faith-based organizations establish the possibilities for recognition through their constructions of refugees and volunteer subjectivity. Instead of a particular method, theory-driven analyses ‘‘outline the contours’’ of theory that ‘‘can serve as the conceptual ground for further critical inquiry’’ (p. 256). Analysis guided by theory follows an iterative Downloaded By: [1 University of New Mexico] At: 17:58 18 November 2009 318 S. L. McKinnon process, moving back and forth between the data of analysis and the theory of analysis (p. 256). In articulating this approach, Jasinksi aligned with Leff’s earlier formulation of rhetorical criticism as iterative: ‘‘What critics are trained to look for and what they see interact in creative tension; two elements blend and separate, progressively changing as altered conceptions of the one reshape the configuration of the other’’ (Leff, 1980, p. 345). The theory, or theoretical concepts informing the project, must be put into dialogue with the rhetorical artifacts under analysis. The critic must hold on to the particularities present in the texts while not relinquishing a sense of the larger theoretical project. He=she must use the theory to ask questions of the data and use the data to complicate the theory. Theory is the means of translating the significance of messages, events, or issues. Importantly, however, theory is also the outcome of analysis. As noted above, the government currently funds 10 volunteer resettlement agencies, 6 of which are religiously affiliated: the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services (LIRS), the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), World Church Service (WCS), World Relief Corporation (WRC), Episcopal Migration Ministries (EMM), and Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS). Of these faith-based organizations the USCCB, LIRS, WCS, and WRC receive the most governmental financial support (ACF, 2008) and annually assist the most refugees in resettling in the United States. In this study, the focus is on the constructions of subjectivity and subsequent possibilities for recognition present in the rhetoric of these four faith-based agencies. The specific texts examined are those designed to educate the public about the function and history of the organizations. These texts include mission statements, service statements, historical accounts, and service= program descriptions, all of which are found on the Internet. The organizations’ on-line newsletters are also examined because these texts tell volunteers about the broad range of activities of their service work. Although these texts remind volunteers and donors that their contributions go toward something significant and worthwhile, they have a darker side: They rely on a dichotomized construction of subjectivity where volunteers are positioned as full actors in the lives of refugees, while refugees are positioned as immobile in their own lives to draw volunteers to serve. Such a depiction produces (mis)recognition of the intersubjectivity of refugees and volunteers through deployments of discourses of difference and sameness. ANALYSIS The Agents, Catalysts, and Doers We are all constituted differently as subjects because of our locations within discourse. The diverse constitutions of subjectivity are apparent in the representations of potential aid-providers and refugees in relation to one another. Bringing New Hope 319 Downloaded By: [1 University of New Mexico] At: 17:58 18 November 2009 In a bi-monthly newsletter to individuals interested in the work of LIRS, President Ralston Deffenbaugh (2004c) explained the goals for LIRS in 2004–2009: ‘‘LIRS will serve the most vulnerable. We will be guided by our unique calling to serve, accompany and empower the stranger who is most voiceless, forgotten and vulnerable when making decisions about areas of service and program design’’ (p. 1). The language used in this and other organizational statements positions potential volunteers as the helpers, the agents, those who empower. The USCCB uses a similar rhetoric to hail volunteers: By assisting a refugee, an entire parish works together to welcome the stranger, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless. Helping a refugee begin a new life in your community is one of the most tangible expressions of what our faith calls us to do, and it is social action that brings blessings to refugees and parishioners alike. (USCCB, n.d.-c) The spirit of helping is continued further: Volunteers not only provide a warm welcome upon the newcomer’s arrival but are instrumental in making the transition into American society go more smoothly. They are needed to help provide social services to the newcomer, to administer pastoral care, and to be an advocate for the rights of immigrants and refugees. (USCCB, n.d.-a) This rhetoric calls volunteers through the repetitive use of language such as welcome, helping, instrumental, and advocate, terms that constitutes them as doers of good deeds. The rhetoric of doing for ‘‘newcomers’’ and ‘‘strangers’’ places volunteers in agent positions of others’ lives and emphasizes an ideology of ‘‘helping’’ out of love and kindness. The WRC also uses particular rhetorical strategies to hail assistance, though their strategy involves couching the rhetoric of doing for in personal narratives from those involved in refugee resettlement. One story entitled ‘‘Africa in My Backyard!’’ recounts the experiences of a Jan, a new volunteer for WRC who was called to sponsor a newly resettled family from the Republic of Congo. As is told, when the WRC volunteer coordinator asked her to sponsor a family: Jan was speechless. Doubts flooded her mind . . . ‘‘I’m not prepared. . . I couldn’t possibly . . . I don’t have the time!’’ But before she could change her mind, Jan responded: ‘‘This is the family I’m supposed to work with! God has sent Africa to me!’’ . . . Jan quickly grew to love Muhoza and Nahoza and their four children. She has walked with them through their transition to life in Texas—even huddling with them in a closet during a tornado warning. God made Jan’s dream of being a missionary come true—right in her own backyard. ‘‘Words cannot express how 320 S. L. McKinnon wonderfully blessed I am to share in the lives of this family . . . how special they have made me feel,’’ she says. (WRC, 2007a) Downloaded By: [1 University of New Mexico] At: 17:58 18 November 2009 This narrative positions volunteers as vital to the resettlement process for refugees, without asking refugees their feelings about the quality of assistance they received. Instead, the narrative conveys to potential volunteers that if they volunteer they will help. This construction of assistance denies the ways relationships between refugees and volunteers can be disappointing, unhelpful, and even violent. Perhaps most interesting, the narrative makes strong ties between volunteering with refugees in the process of resettlement and actual missionary work; though perhaps not as direct, the other organizations’ direct references to biblical scripture also make similar connections. As is explicated by the LIRS President in his call to action: The message of Matthew 25 is not simply that people of good will should be compassionate and do good deeds for needy people . . . What we are told is that there is something holy here: it is precisely through this work of service, this human encounter between those who can help and ‘the least of these,’ that we encounter God. (LIRS, 2004c, p. 1) Framed through this sort of scripture, the undergirding reason volunteers are called to serve is not to build relationships or improve the lives of others, but for the salvation of the refugees and volunteers. The Uprooted, Vulnerable Stranger Although potential volunteers are recognized as actors of change, refugees are acted upon, represented as ‘‘voiceless’’ and ‘‘most vulnerable.’’ In the LIRS 2004–2009 plan cited above, refugees are constructed as ‘‘the stranger who is most voiceless, forgotten and vulnerable’’ (2004c, p. 1). This representation is equal to the USCCB description of refugees: ‘‘MRS offers hope to some of the world’s most desperate people—refugees who have fled their countries of origin in fear for their lives, refugee and migrant children who are alone with no one to care for them, and adult and child victims of human trafficking’’ (USCCB, n.d.-b). To explain the experiences of refugees to the unacquainted, Church World Service (CWS) takes readers on what the organization calls a Refugee’s Journey, hailing readers to ‘‘take a walk in their shoes’’ (CWS, 2007d). The so-called journey begins with the words of Nushe Hadrjonaj, a Kosovo woman, about her flight from Kosovo involving police interrogation, forced separation from her daughter, and her husband’s decreasing physical and mental stability. The rest of the slideshow takes readers through a simplified account of displacement. What is most interesting about this presentation is the rhetorical construction of refugee subjectivity through Downloaded By: [1 University of New Mexico] At: 17:58 18 November 2009 Bringing New Hope 321 images. Corresponding with the Kosovo woman’s word is an image of a White woman in the foreground walking on a path amongst trees with an endless horizon of people trailing behind her. The woman appears to be sick with worry; her forehead is furrowed, lips tense, and she seems to be walking with haste. This image, when read in conjunction with the text, makes the reader feel as if he=she is actually seeing Nushe Hadrjonaj in flight. The narrative is seemingly more honest, more authentic through the image; audiences are called to feel for the woman ‘‘uprooted’’ without family and possessions (CWS, 2007d). The narrative ends with this frame, but the images continue to purportedly tell a ‘‘refugee’s journey.’’ In the next frame, entitled ‘‘fleeing persecution,’’ yet another procession of walking people fan out into the horizontal background of the image while Black women carrying loads of what appear to be heavy objects upon their heads are presented in the foreground of the image. But, unlike the White woman illustrated in the frame before, we cannot see the details of their faces, of their expressions. Instead they are presented by the organization as emotionless figures, walking, carrying much on their person; the women in the image are symbols of ‘‘uprootedness,’’ and in contrast to the White, singular woman in the previous image, there is no clear connection to feeling and to humanity (CWS, 2007b). These stirring images do not end with these two frames, but continue throughout the guided tour of a ‘‘refugee’s journey.’’ In the next frame viewers are compelled by a row of emaciated Black children receiving assistance in what is framed as a refugee camp (CWS, 2007c); next is a group of people being pushed in a cart by another person against a landscape of dilapidated buildings and debris (CWS, 2007e). Each image presents subjects who are in some way moving, not still, except in the final frame. This slide, entitled ‘‘beginning a new life,’’ presents a group of people posing directly facing the camera before what seems to be a church altar. In the middle stands a White woman wearing a black robe and stole, clearly marking her as a minister. On her right are three Black men and on her left a group of five White people— two women, two men, and one child (CWS, 2007a). In contrast to the previous photographs, this image of resettlement conveys unity, community, and stability with the church symbolically at the heart of these qualities in refugees’ lives. In both the textual and imagistic constructions, refugees are figured as in motion, or ‘‘uprooted’’ as the primary metaphor of refugeeness used by the organizations conveys (Malkki, 1995). Accordingly, refugees are also represented as ‘‘in need’’—in need of education, jobs, training, and transportation (Nyers, 2006). These constructions are not necessarily problematic on their own, as refugees, by definition, experience flight from their home and do have needs that the organizations tend to; what is troubling is the repetitive uniformity of these messages and the absence of representations that complicate the ‘‘uprooted and needy refugee’’ construction. For instance, the pages 322 S. L. McKinnon Downloaded By: [1 University of New Mexico] At: 17:58 18 November 2009 scantly recognize the ways those in camps and resettlement create networks through which refugees can navigate to respond to their short-term and long-term needs. Moreover, the web pages provide minimal descriptions of how potential volunteers may learn about the cultural histories and traditions of the people with whom they will work. Additionally, these constructions ignore what resettled refugees bring with them—advanced degrees, years of specialized work experience, and highly sought-after skills that are often not seen as valid by the U.S. government and many U.S. employers. The USCCB and CWS each provide single statements claiming that volunteers also gain from relationships with refugees (CWS, 2008; USCCB, n.d.-c). The USCCB lists the following as the benefits of volunteering: The satisfaction of translating our Catholic beliefs into concrete social action; The joy of helping disenfranchised people succeed in rebuilding their lives and becoming healthy, contributing members of our communities; The privilege of personally observing and learning about other cultures; The solidarity and community building that come from joining hands and forces to live the Gospel message; The knowledge that any time or energy spent in helping a refugee is returned a hundredfold, for God can never be outdone in generosity. (USCCB, n.d.-c) Here the benefits that volunteers offer far outweigh those they receive; and the rewards they do receive privilege the volunteers’ own spiritual advancement in doing the work, making secondary any endowments received from refugees themselves or from the relationship. (Mis)recognizing Intersubjectivity To be intersubjective means to recognize that you constitute and are constituted by others. One must recognize that she=he is already and always never really autonomous (Butler, 2004a, p. 26). When we disregard such intersubjectivity by emphasizing difference, or seemingly affirming intersubjectivity through emphasizing sameness (thus disavowing it), we deny that we are perpetually done and undone by others (Butler, 2004b, p. 19). Shome and Hegde (2002a), in criticizing critical communication studies for the investment in ‘‘difference,’’ explained that ‘‘‘difference’ is usually assumed to occupy a location that is far away from us, in some ‘other worlds,’ in some other place—usually away from the ‘(white) West’ at least in the postcolonial framework—and on the flip side, sameness is usually seen as that which is ‘near,’ in places close to us’’ (p. 175). For faith-based resettlement agencies, difference is what establishes the norms of recognition. The norms of recognition—namely White, prosperous, Christian, Western—call potential providers as full-speaking subjects while refugees are recognized in some instances as so very different from volunteers, and yet in other instances, as strategically the same. Downloaded By: [1 University of New Mexico] At: 17:58 18 November 2009 Bringing New Hope 323 The discourse of difference maintains a separation from those who must be ‘‘helped.’’ The discourse creates a hierarchy of humanity where those who are ‘‘seen’’ must do their part, in the name of love, to ‘‘help’’ refugees resettle in the United States. This comes through in the mission statement of LIRS: ‘‘In response to God’s love in Christ, we welcome the stranger, bringing new hope and new life through ministries of service and justice’’ (LIRS, 2004a). Similarly, USCCB depicts potential aid-providers as perfectly situated to provide such help. As cited above, prospective volunteers are hailed to help ‘‘newcomers’’ in ‘‘making the transition into American society go more smoothly’’ (USCCB, n.d.-a); WRC demonstrates this relationship in its stories that center refugees’ first days in the United States (WRC, 2007a, 2007d, 2007e). The discourse of ‘‘stranger,’’ ‘‘newcomer,’’ and helping to bring ‘‘new life’’ continually recur in the rhetoric of the LIRS, USCCB and WRC, implying that refugees are unknowing and foreign to the U.S. ‘‘American’’ way. If someone is strange or new, they don’t quite know the ropes; it is then implied that refugees are in need of ‘‘rescuing,’’ to know how to ‘‘transition into American society.’’ As is explicated by LIRS, this ‘‘rescuing’’ is indeed the mission of volunteers: Life would be simpler if the outstretched hands of our refugee brothers and sisters were not within our reach. But they are! We might at moments wish that God has arranged it otherwise, but He hasn’t. As long as He has placed us in the position to be the rescuing sponsors instead of the refugees, how can we ask to be excused. (LIRS, 2004c, p. 2) When conjoined with the notion of ‘‘new life,’’ this call to be ‘‘rescuing sponsors’’ furthers an ideology of assimilation in which volunteers know the way and are insiders to what it means to be in ‘‘American society.’’ The ‘‘new life’’ also invites the view that the lives refugees had before resettling in the United States weren’t worth living; it implies refugees enter resettlement without a past, without a history. The discourse of bringing ‘‘strangers’’ a ‘‘new life’’ depicts life in the United States as worth living, as a worthy human existence in sharp contrast the experiences of refugees in the places they left. In this vein, resettled refugees enter, from the beginning, into socially mediated positions as ‘‘strangers’’ and other. This constitution doesn’t allow for recognition of the ways that refugees are agents in their own resettlement. What counts is what is present in the purview of those called to help. Likewise, the norms of recognition constrain the ways intelligibility and thus recognition will manifest in resettlement. Consequently, a refugee’s experiences prior to resettlement in the United States implicitly do not matter to the ways that they are recognized. What counts is in the present, the ‘‘new life.’’ This distinction of lives, the old versus new, maintains a legacy of assimilation whereby refugees are expected to enter the United States Downloaded By: [1 University of New Mexico] At: 17:58 18 November 2009 324 S. L. McKinnon and take on the ‘‘new life’’ that is ‘‘brought’’ to them. And the norms of recognition mandate assimilation because this ‘‘new life’’ is constructed as a privilege, a gift, something that is not given to everyone and should definitely be accepted. Recognition of the relationship between refugees and those called to assist them comes through in yet another way: Sameness is emphasized. In a newsletter to those affiliated with refugee resettlement, LIRS touches upon the commonalities between their key audiences. The president of LIRS exclaimed, ‘‘America is a nation of immigrants,’’ and he then spoke of the Christian churches filled with Arab-Americans, Liberians, Ghanaians, Chinese and Fujian migrants. What makes all of these groups representable and recognizable is that they are all Christian. The president explains, ‘‘The U.S. Lutheran Church is an immigrant church. We cherish the heritage and hymns brought to our country over the centuries, and still being brought today’’ (LIRS, 2004b, p. 1). Similarly, USCCB highlights a history of immigration: ‘‘Perhaps the greatest obstacle to welcoming the stranger is that many Americans have forgotten their immigrant past. The strangers among us thus bring a richness that we are bound to embrace, for their sake and for our own’’ (USCCB, n.d.-c). Highlighting providers’ connection to immigration implies that we are all really the same. Additionally in this comparison, both organizations conflate a history of immigration with the refugee experience, minimizing the experiences of persecution and contemporary bureaucratic complexities that make refugee resettlement different than the history that is hailed. Most contradictory though, is the way volunteers are called to remember their past, a move toward humanizing potential volunteers, while the histories of refugees are absent. In this way, those who resettle only become recognizable when the past is absent and they are assimilated into recognition or become ‘‘the same’’ (Benjamin, 1994). Hence, when the organizations speak of refugees in general, refugees are recognized as ‘‘strangers,’’ ‘‘newcomers,’’ and the ‘‘uprooted.’’ Yet when Christian refugee groups are represented, it is the sameness that is emphasized. The implication here is that what is assumed to be unfamiliar can only be rendered familiar through an erasure of the past. The WRC is perhaps the most glaring in its use of ‘‘sameness’’ when detailing the experiences of Christian refugees. The organization presents a narrative about an 80-year-old Christian couple who resettled in California alongside stories detailing the experiences Burmese, Congolese, and Burundian people. These narratives are bursting with rhetorics of ‘‘uprootedness,’’ ‘‘stranger,’’ and ‘‘new hope and new life’’ that function to construct refugees as radically different (WRC, 2007a, 2007c, 2007d). The Christian couple, on the other hand, is positioned as a thriving part of a community, the ‘‘Russian Baptist Church in West Sacramento, where they’ve been welcomed with open arms’’ (WRC, 2007b). The story highlights the strength of their beliefs and the discrimination the couple experienced for those Downloaded By: [1 University of New Mexico] At: 17:58 18 November 2009 Bringing New Hope 325 beliefs. What is most stark about this narrative is the absence of the dominant rhetorics of refugeeness; this absence works to situate this couple as more similar to the volunteers and donors who may be reading their story and, consequently, as more active agents in their resettlement process. In understanding this sameness and difference through recognition, it is important to note that neither representations of refugees as ‘‘irrevocably different’’ or as the ‘‘same in Christ’’ constitute recognition, for in both cases faith-based agencies deny their intersubjectivity with refugees. Even when refugees are represented as the same, they are recognized as such only through the norms of recognition—Christian and American— that constitute the faith-based organizations and volunteers as subjects. I posit that the subjectivity of faith-based agencies and possible volunteers rests upon the continual (mis)recognition of refugees as full-speaking subjects. Volunteers are not called to ‘‘help’’ because refugees are agents or intersubjectively enmeshed in the acts that constitute their subjectivity. Instead, the underlying message makes clear that such ‘‘helping’’ is done to secure potential aid-providers’ humanness and position in the afterlife. Applying Matthew 25:31–46, the president of LIRS persuades volunteers to ‘‘help’’ for their own good, namely their own right to and position in eternity: ‘‘Who are those who are blessed, who will inherit the kingdom from the foundation of the world? It is those who feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, care for the sick, visit the prisoners’’ (LIRS, 2004c, p. 1). On the pages of the USCCB a comment from Pope Paul IV reminds individuals: We cannot insist too much on the duty of giving foreigners a hospitable reception. It is a duty imposed by human solidarity and by Christian charity . . . . They should be welcomed in the spirit of brotherly love, so that the concrete example of wholesome living may give them a high opinion of authentic Christian charity and of spiritual values. (USCCB, n.d.-c) Here the motivation concerns not only the fulfillment of Christianoriented ontological assumptions about the world, but the opportunity to share that ontology with others, to witness through praxis how life can be in Christianity. In both cases, volunteers are called to serve not because assistance is needed, but because there is potential in the act of service to demonstrate the rightness of a faith-led ontology. The (mis)recognition of refugees emphasizes the agency and subjectivity of faith-based organizations and volunteers while disregarding the ways refugees act and make sense of their experiences. Articulating the ideas of Hegel, Butler (1997) explained that ‘‘the working of a slave is thus to be understood as a marking by which regularly unmarks itself, a signatory act which puts itself under erasure at the moment in which it is circulated, for circulation here is always a matter of expropriation by the lord’’ (p. 38). 326 S. L. McKinnon In order for the organization’s work and subjectivity to be recognized, it must write over or ‘‘erase’’ the very markings of agency made by refugees in resettlement. The denial of agency is done by the organizations and its volunteers. The (mis)recognition centers on the organization’s difficulty in recognizing intersubjectivity with=to refugees themselves (Benjamin, 1994). As demonstrated, this myopia occurs repeatedly in the faith-based rhetoric when the volunteer’s singular subjectivity and potential salvation are privileged as the motivating factors for the organizations’ and volunteers’ activities with refugees. Thus, refugees remain primarily different and non-agents so that the eternal positions and goodness of the organization and its workers can be fulfilled. Downloaded By: [1 University of New Mexico] At: 17:58 18 November 2009 CONCLUSION This article argues that faith-based refugee resettlement agencies recruit volunteers by relying on rhetorical constructions of refugees as ‘‘needy, uprooted strangers’’ and of volunteers as ‘‘agents of change.’’ These constructions barely if at all resemble the actual subject positions that refugees and volunteers take up in their own lives and in the lives of each other. And yet, the constancy and repetition of these representations makes it difficult to recognize subjectivity and relationality otherwise. As such, these rhetorical constructions detrimentally influence the ways volunteers recognize their intersubjectivity to and with the people they serve. The rhetorical strategies often play on motivations of personal salvation or the potential salvation of others rather than calling individuals to volunteer based on the possibility of working toward radically humane relationships with individuals who appear at first so immensely other to the self. The denial of intersubjectivity provides faith-based resettlement agencies means to maintain modernist ontological constructions and relations in the world, despite functioning in fundamentally postmodern, postcolonial contexts. The modernist binary is most notably evident in the way that the rhetoric of ‘‘new life’’ is utilized. This is conveyed in the key messages from all of the organizations, yet demonstrated most explicitly by LIRS whose organizational theme is ‘‘Bringing new hope and new life’’: ‘‘In the spirit of our mission and the American way, we have answered the call to serve those who cannot go home and to assist those seeking new life in a new land’’ (LIRS, n.d.). Phrased in this way, there is a new land and a new life waiting—an image that subtly conveys the ideal that refugees should establish a new home in the United States. Home, in this sense, cannot simultaneously be here and there, or even there. Instead, implied in this statement is that refugees have progressed enough to have ‘‘new life in a new land.’’ They have endured enough, persevered enough, and come far enough to have a ‘‘new life.’’ Unarticulated, however, is that this ‘‘newness’’ inevitably exists in relation to something that is old. The old in this case is left in the Downloaded By: [1 University of New Mexico] At: 17:58 18 November 2009 Bringing New Hope 327 unarticulated past while the present and future take the foreground. Refugees are supposed to resettle into the U.S. American way. The master narrative of progress not only works in the way that refugees are supposed to resettle, but it underlies the impetus for the call to volunteers. This modern dichotomizing of space and time is strongly resonant with ontological positions deployed to justify Christian civilizing missions. As Dunch (2002) explicated, ‘‘in general, missionaries in the imperialist era came to their fields convinced of the intellectual, moral, and spiritual superiority of what they thought of, not as their ‘culture,’ but as ‘Civilization’’’ (p. 310). Replace ‘‘civilization’’ with ‘‘American way’’ or ‘‘new life in a new land’’ and eerily the message stays the same, only in this instance the mission doesn’t have to go anywhere. In the context of U.S. refugee resettlement, where faith-based organizations are the primary service-workers for refugees around the world and for those who resettle in the United States, I contend that it is vital to question the ways colonial discourses and practices emerge when faithbased agencies represent and engage with refugee groups. Communication and culture scholars can interrogate and intervene in this dynamic by first examining the deployment of binaries such as us–them, host– guest, West–East, developed–underdeveloped, and progressive–primitive that frame the positionality of refugees (Krishnaswamy, 2002; Parameswaran, 2002; Shome & Hegde, 2002b). Second, scholars might examine implications of the values that are hailed by faith-based agencies—such as love and care—in calling potential volunteers to act. In considering the values of love, care and helping, often cited as impetus for interactions with others, Davis (2002) explained, ‘‘The civilizing-Christianizing mission of colonization, drawing on the ethical-epistemological schemas of the Enlightenment, asserted a benevolent function, and Christian ideologies of love formed a supportive partnership with knowledge procedures imposed upon the colonized’’ (p. 147). Taking a cue from Davis’s postcolonial analysis of love as an ethic, scholars might question how desires to help refugees might reinforce colonialist relationships between subjects (Spivak, 1999). The use of recognition as the guiding conceptual frame necessitates a final question: Does the relationship between refugees and volunteers need to be constructed as it has been by resettlement agencies; or more specifically, do faith-based resettlement agencies have to represent refugees as ‘‘the uprooted and vulnerable stranger’’ in order to garner public attention and support. And is misrecognition the only form of recognition refugees are afforded when guided by dominant western Christianity? While the case study presented in this article might lead me to answer in the affirmative, I believe that there is possibility to construct more humane representations of both refugees and volunteers through faith-based philosophies. Christian liberation theology offers just one version of what this possibility might 328 S. L. McKinnon Downloaded By: [1 University of New Mexico] At: 17:58 18 November 2009 be. This positioning demands that religion ‘‘no longer constitute itself by excluding the voice of the subordinated Others. Rather, by constituting itself as a heterogeneous polyphonic public, theology would be able to develop critical collaboration and discursive practices in the interest of a democratic public no longer confined to élite male citizens in church and nation’’ (Fiorenza, 1995, p. 270). Recognition guided through this and similar faith-based positions might work to recognize refugees in the fullness of their humanity first. Recognition would have to be situated in an understanding of the histories, discourses, and power relations that constitute the relationship between refugees and providers, working to challenge the hegemonic representations of refugees as ‘‘helpless’’ and of volunteers=donors as ‘‘actors.’’ NOTES 1. This is particularly the case since 2001 when President George W. Bush established of the Office of Faith Based and Community Initiatives (OFBCI). The OFBCI organizes the funding of community and faith-based grant projects related to the five federal departments: the Offices of Housing and Urban Development, Education, Labor, Justice and Health and Human Services. Many organizations and programs that now provide key services to people in the United States and around the world gain access to funding through this federal office. One set of organizations to gain funding through the OFBCI is voluntary refugee resettlement agencies, otherwise known under the acronym of VOLAGs. Once the state determines who will be granted resettlement in the United States, these organizations do the work of organizing their arrival as well as providing the initial support and services. 2. Communication scholars have also richly taken up the question of what is necessary in a communicative interaction for there to be ethical communication. This article works through the psychoanalytic concept of recognition, as I am most interested in the discourses that play at a psychic level in the ways individuals see, know and engage with others. Communication scholars take up similar problematic in their work concerning communication ethics, dialogue and interpersonal relations (Cissna & Arnett, 1994; Lipari, 2004; Murray, 2003; Peters, 1999). As Lipari explicated, the work of these theorists established grounds to understand ethical communication as, ‘‘(a) acknowledging radical alterity, (b) decentering egoistic subjectivity, (c) privileging the ethical obligation, and (d) emphasizing the constitutive over the symbolic dimensions of communication’’ (pp. 127–128). Recognition is a derivative of these ethical ideals in practice. 3. Notably, the psychoanalytic focus of recognition articulated by Butler (2004b) and Benjamin (1998) is not uniformly accepted by critical theorists. Fraser (2000, 2001) and Taylor (1994) theorize recognition as a phenomenon of the social realm in which the question is about how individuals acknowledge the different identities and contributions of other subjects in society. REFERENCES Administration for Children and Families. (2008). FY2006 grant awards by program office. Retrieved August 15, 2008, from http://www.acf.hhs.gov/grants/awards/ offices.html#orr. Beasley, V. B. (Ed.). (2006). 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