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Book Review: The Stranger within Your Gates, Uprooted People in the World Today

The Stranger Within Your Gates, Uprooted People in the World Today By Andre Jacques Geneva, S W: World Council of Churches 1986,87pp.,paper. $6.50 Reviewed by Janet W. May and Roy H . May, Jr. The life situation of most of the world’s people is precarious at best, but no one experiences vulnerability more than migrants and refugees. This publication in the WCC’s “Risk Book” series passionately explores their plight “to arouse our indignation and create in us a feeling of responsibility” (p. vii). Andre Jacques, secretary for Migration in the WCC’s Commission on InterChurch Aid, Refugees and World Service, does that well. Jacques presents the human reality of 15 million refugees and more than 30 million migrants in case studies from Central America to Pakistan, South Africa to Europe and the United States. Refugees flee “on the highways of fear,” caught in civil strife and natural disasters. Migrants leave “on the paths of hunger,” forced by economic circumstances to seek a living in other parts. Whatever their reasons, “no one has the right to blame the exiles for their decision to flee” (p. 3). Particularly helpful, Jacques relates the special hardship experienced by migrant and refugee women. Rooted in a theology of the poor, the author reminds Christians that exile is central to our faith history. Citing several examples, Christians are challenged to respond to the immediate needs of the uprooted, and also to struggle against the causes of uprootedness. Three appendices provide useful data. This is not an academic book. It limits its focus primarily to migrants and to WCC-related work. It will be useful in a variety of settings--church study groups, seminary classes dealing with global human concerns, and also cross-cultural pastoral care and counseling. Missionaries, both active and in training, will find it to be a helpful resource. All who work in the third world will recognize the importance of this subject. Not only are there many uprooted people around us, but also it is impossible to read this book without recognizing our own pain as strangers within the gates of our host countries and institutions of service.