Lessons in Shared Sufficiency: How Refugees and Community Partners Practice Belonging at a Faith-Based Community Hub 公开

Abstract

This dissertation employs qualitative methods to investigate practices of belonging in the context of refugee resettlement. Drawing on participant observation, interviews, and focus groups with the onsite partners of Lattice Ministries, a faith-based community hub in the U.S. Southeast, I demonstrate how established Americans and individuals who came to this country as refugees are working to expand opportunities to belong together. My research partners are designing for belonging and practicing recognition, accompaniment, and turning. By engaging these practices, my interlocutors contribute to processes of moral formation. As they practice belonging across difference, these newcomers and established Americans shed light on the paucity of self-sufficiency as the telos for refugee resettlement. Amid limitations and challenges, my research partners work to build a community sustained by and oriented towards the telos of shared sufficiency. My findings illuminate the reality that the work of growing belonging can be shared. They offer resources for faith communities involved in refugee resettlement that seek to ground their work in a framework of belonging. This research also underscores the need for belonging practices and a reorientation to shared sufficiency in societies characterized by individualism, loneliness, and polarization.

Table of Contents

1) When Nobody is Outside: An Introduction

2) Doors are Open: Principles of Design for Belonging

3) You are First Human: Practicing Recognition

4) It Looks Like Holding Their Hand: Practicing Accompaniment

5) Riding on the Wind of the Spirit: Practicing Turning Towards and Away

6) My Family, They’re All Coming: Concluding Notes

About this Dissertation

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School	Laney Graduate School
Department	Religion
Subfield / Discipline	Ethics and Society
Degree	Ph.D.
Submission	Dissertation
Language	English
Research Field	Theology Sociology, General Ethics
关键词	practices faith communities sufficiency moral formation belonging ethics refugee resettlement telos
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Jennifer Ayres, Emory University Ellen Marshall, Emory University Marla Frederick, Harvard University Elizabeth Bounds, Emory University Cassidy Puckett, Emory University

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