Where does your family actually come from?

A reflection by Dr Joe Lüdemann on a lesson he taughtin a 9th grade class at a high school in Hermannsburg.

25 pupils from Hermannsburg high school look at me with questionmarks in their eyes. From their appearance, you would think that at least 20 of them are Hermannsburg residents, whose forefathers have stayed here for centuries. But that's just it - drawing conclusions about a person's migration history from their appearance says more about the prejudices of the observer than about the person being observed. In this lesson, I'm going to pursue the fascinating question of migration background on the basis of my own biography, which is very much characterised by migration for various reasons:

My grandfather on my father's side left Germany in the 1920s for economic reasons. As the youngest son of a large family, there was no inheritance and hardly any work in Germany at the time. So he earned his living as a gaucho (cowboy) in Argentina and as a groundsman/ caretaker at a factory site in the USA. My maternal grandfather was a South African of German descent who moved to Germany for educational reasons - to the missionary seminary in Hermannsburg. His fiancée, a pastor's daughter from Schaumburg-Lippe, emigrated to a remote mission station in Zululand in South Africa in the 1930s - reason for migration: love and marriage. Migration is still a constant reality in my (extended) family to this day, with cousins in Australia, Switzerland, New Zealand, South Africa, Germany...

With the short film "Never stop knocking..." I lead over to the ELM's commitment to migrants and refugees in South Africa. The migration story of pastor Rosalie Madika from Congo to South Africa fascinates the students - also the fact that she is involved in the "Refugee and Migrant Mission" (RMM) project, which is supported by the ELM and the regional church of Hanover, for the very marginalised group of French-speaking refugees and migrants. These people fled from civil wars in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the genocide in Rwanda at the time and also from Burundi via dangerous routes all the way to South Africa - only to find themselves exposed to numerous new dangers there: Xenophobia, unemployment, difficult access to schools and hospitals...

Pastor Madika knows all this from her own experience. In cooperation with the "Lutheran Community Outreach Foundation" (LCOF), an NGO that is also supported by ELM, she is able to arrange legal advice for the lengthy process of clarifying the residence status of migrants. The LCOF organises English courses and short skills training courses that assist people to earn a living: Four-week courses in welding or carpentry - for hairdressing or make-up (Beautician) help to generate a small income. Rosalie talks to school headmasters so that they accept the children of migrants and refugees and to hospital staff so that they do not turn away patients from this group. "Never stop knocking... I never stop knocking!" ...both with refugees and migrants, who are afraid to confide in anyone due to bad experiences, and with state institutions, which are often initially dismissive of this group of people.

Finally, it gets practical. Based on a few key words about six "typical" short biographies of refugees and migrants living in South Africa, the pupils have the task of describing the challenges that these people face. Solutions must be prioritised. Where does immediate action need to be taken and what needs to be resolved in the long term? And then: try to put yourself in the shoes of the refugees ... and also in the shoes of your South African neighbours. What do they feel? How do they express themselves? What do they tend to remain silent about? The pupils work on this task in groups - even in the next lesson, in which I am no longer present.

The lesson with the secondary school pupils gave me food for thought. Who shapes their thoughts on the topic of migration? Particularly in the election campaign before the European elections, this topic is often treated in a shrill, simplified way, with black and white imagery and as an issue about "the others there". As ELM, we are committed to working for and with refugees and migrants based on an even deeper principle that unites people: As children of God, migrants* and refugees become my brothers and sisters. ...and through our partner churches, South Africans are also our brothers and sisters - the people who sometimes complain: "We already have 35% unemployment! The state should take care of us first and not let others into the country!"

The way I respond to both groups says something about my image of God and therefore also of humanity. My helplessness is also an understandable reaction for many, given the almost unsolvable problems in this area. The film about Pastor Madika, the short biographies of migrant women in South Africa, but also the story of my extended family, which is so shaped by migration - the pupils tackled the topic on an emotional, biographical and social level and were able to take a few steps towards a differentiated approach, but also towards practical solutions to the topic of migration and flight.