Ignoring migrants' religious communities fails Ireland's integration efforts
When people move to Ireland, their faith community offers a range of supports that enable them to settle here: local knowledge, signposting to State services, housing and employment opportunities, and friendship.
The coming weeks promise updates and reflections on the investigations and arrests following the anti-immigration violence in Drogheda and Citywest.
The scenes witnessed in the past few weeks are forcing us to reckon — quickly — with bigotry that is getting more and more brazen. People living in direct provision and emergency accommodation fear for their safety. They fear harassment and assault. They fear their temporary homes will become the site of violent protests — or will be set ablaze while their children sleep.
Our social policies are failing to confront the rampant rise of extremist anti-immigration rhetoric. Vulnerable people are being targeted, threatened, and isolated.
Following extreme anti-immigration violence, there is often a focus on criminal justice, with little attention paid to strategies for community integration. Perpetrators rightfully face “serious consequences,” for their crimes, but the State fails to recognise grassroots integration work which is critical to building community cohesion and challenging far right vitriol.
Without recognising and facilitating integration efforts, condemnations and arrests will do little to prevent further devastation. Even in areas acutely affected by rioting and violent protests against immigration, such work happens all the time. It happens across generations, across ethnic and national differences, and it results in robust integration. One place where it happens constantly and is often overlooked is in faith-based communities.
The Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice (JCFJ) has published a timely research report that demonstrates the vital role faith-based communities play in the well-being of their locality.
As part of the research team, I heard, first-hand, how such communities act as ‘first responders’ to the needs of their members.
Faith-based communities facilitate integration within and across social groups. They promote social bonds between fellow migrants as well as social bridges to Irish-born peers. This kind of support is immediate and trust-based in a way Government supports often are not. It allows people to feel at home here and to flourish.
These communities offer invaluable contributions to the common good, but there remains a lack of understanding and engagement on the part of Government officials.
Throughout our interviews with members of faith-based communities and stakeholders in the area, it became apparent the State has a significant blind spot to this integration. Government structures have a legally mandated responsibility to consider religion in the execution of their functions, as per the public sector equality and human rights duty.
Despite this, religious literacy is wanting. Integration strategies make only passing reference to religion, if at all. The vibrancy of these communities is consistently seen as a private matter rather than a public civic asset.
There are serious ramifications to this. If public services and community leaders are not connected or engaged with each other, a vacuum is created. Within such a vacuum, misinformation and fear fester.
This, in turn, is exploited and mobilised by the far right, filling the space where trust-based community structures should be engaged with State services as partners.
During the November 2023 riots in Dublin, for example, gardaí struggled to reach vulnerable communities that needed protection, simply because they did not know where they were. In the aftermath, where connections were made, the relationships formed were very positive.
In all of our interviews, faith-based community members are contributing to the wellbeing of their area, and eager to do so in collaboration with others. To fail to engage this is to fail to adequately combat bigotry.
The report makes a number of practical recommendations. A number of these deal with religious liaison and literacy, namely in the formation of faith liaison officer roles. These positions would enable local councils to establish long-lasting working relationships with community leaders.
This aim is also achieved by religious literacy training. Training for frontline staff on local faith landscapes and equal treatment will make the implementation of integration goals more successful.
Having a staff member involved in faith liaison also enables an up-to-date opt-in community register to be kept with contact details of faith leaders for quick and effective communication.
Additionally, the report recommends a rumour control channel, which would enable the broadcasting of swift updates to communities during incidents. These measures improve crisis readiness. They are concrete examples of a thoughtful response to anti-immigration extremism.
Keeping questions of religion, faith, and cultural difference at an arm’s length does nothing to curb harmful binary rhetoric of ‘us’ versus ‘them’. Integration is not a buzzword, a box to be ticked; it is a reality that people navigate every day. If we are honestly committed to a flourishing, plural, democratic society, then responding to extremist, bigoted violence demands recognition of the role faith-based communities can play in integration.
- Sophie Manaeva is a research assistant at the Jesuit Centre for Faith & Justice
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