Author Interview: Understanding narratives of identity and citizenship amongst Middle Eastern Christians in the UK

Interview conducted by Caterina Barbi, MECACS intern and master student at the University of St Andrews.

Dr Fiona McCallum Guiney is Senior Lecturer in the School of International Relations and works on the political role of Christians in the Middle East including identity, minority rights, church-state-societal relations, Christian-Muslim conflict, interfaith dialogue, migration and the role of the diaspora.

She is guest editor of a recent issue of Mashriq and Mahjar: Journal of Middle East and North African Migration Studieson ‘Middle East Christians in Europe’. The special issue explores themes relating to identity and citizenship in the UK, Denmark and Austria and is an output of the HERA grant Defining and Identifying Middle Eastern Christians in Europe.

The below interview provides some background on the wider project and focuses upon the recent publication. 

Could you briefly introduce the project and its aims?

“Defining and Identifying Middle Eastern Christian Communities in Europe” is a collaborative project developed with Roskilde University, University of Lodz and the Churches’ Commission for Migrants in Europe. It aims at looking at migration, taking away the securitization aspect, while still analyzing the issue of identity in Europe. Further, it explores what we call the internal dynamics of the communities, to see what institutions significant and what issues seemed important to these communities. The second strand focused on the relations with wider society, that included state relations but mostly concerned itself with localinteractions. The third area that we looked at was the transnational aspect. Interestingly, at first, we assumed that they would mostly be linked to their home communities in the Middle East, but we later discovered that the relations withother diaspora communities were just as important. This is especially true for smaller diaspora groups, such as the ones in the UK and Denmark, where there is a sense of reaching out to these larger communities for assistance. These were the areas that we were looking at and it led to quite interesting research findings, in terms of what was important to these communities, with the church being a central institution and the issue of misrecognition (the presumption of being Muslim or Arab) being often cited as an important one.

Why did you decide to focus on Christian migrants?

The choice was mostly rooted in the research expertise of the people involved in the project. For me personally, when I worked on the political role of religious leaders, I observed that the diasporas can strengthen the position of these figures the Coptic Orthodox and Maronites patriarchs. I was quite intrigued by this and it was definitely something I wanted to look at further. We also felt that Middle East Christians, despite their small numbers, would be an interesting case study to explore whether the Christian aspect of their identity would play an important role in how they interact with the new societies. We discovered that it did not, in fact, play a significant role mostly because the host populations are not really aware of the existence of Middle East Christians and the issue of misrecognition becomes a prominent one. The aim was really to explore new case studies in the context ofEurope.

How does their religion shape the relationship with British citizenship? Does it affect their patriotism?

Our research has shown that for Middle East Christians, their religious identity is very strong and there is a sense that coming to Europe is connected with its Christian heritage and its majority population. At the same time, this does not always tend to reflect reality. Going back to the idea of misrecognition, Europeans are generally not aware that there are Middle East Christians and there is always an assumed link to Islam. The reaction to this is a sense that it does affect how they link to British society. A lot of our research has shown that responses to this were mostly internalised, with a strong focus on their own communities, where there is no need to explain your identity. Of course, we also saw very different reactions to misrecognition.  In terms of how this affect their idea of citizenship, I think it does to a certain extent, because citizenship is not only understood in its legal dimension. There is a lot of stress on the importance of being treated as equal, in everyday life. And that poses a problem of acceptance by wider population, especially if one does not understand your identity and questions it. Particularly because in the current climate there is quite a lot of hostility towards Islam and Muslims migrants and being seen as a Muslim exposes you to the same level of Islamophobia.

Does the geographic spread and location of these communities tell us something about the process of integration?

What we discovered for the Coptic community is that they are more widespread in the UK, and this certainly seems to be linked to the fact that a lot of them are working in the medical profession. This is one of the reasons why you would find Copts in many different areas. London is still central to them, with most churches being there, but Birmingham is another important centre. The location definitely impacts their experiences. London is very different from Kirkaldy, which is the location of the only Coptic Orthodox Church in Scotland. This opens many possibilities for research, as it would be interesting to look at how urban and city life, in London, Birmingham or Manchester, compares to their experiences in Scotland, where the population is not as diverse. For the other communities, as they are smaller and not as connected to the NHS, they tend to be more concentrated around London, where most churches are. There are communities elsewhere, but the core institutional life takes place in London. As such, when you conduct research, you will most likely hear of life in London, which is not very representative of the rest of the UK. However, this also allows you to study how they are received by other immigrant groups. We were interested in seeing whether the Coptic community had ties with the non-Coptic Egyptian diaspora. The answer is not really. For most, the centre of social life is the church.

How does the structural exclusion of these communities in their home countries affect their perception of citizenship and belonging in the UK?

This is up for debate. In the Egyptian case, there is a sense of discrimination in everyday life and security concerns, particularly after the 2013 government change. We can see that the Coptic community was often scapegoated, and this reflects past patterns of violence beforehand as well. For most of our Egyptian interviewees, violence and discrimination were not primary motivations for leaving but it was seen as something that did influence the decision. Primary push factors were mostly of economic nature. As for the Iraqi case, most of our subjects had left Iraq before 2003 and economic issues were more significant, with only a few cases where someone was active against the Ba’athist regime. The few that left after 2003 expressed a general sense that life as a Christian was harder and religion made you more likely to be targeted by the different militias, with the Iraqi state not being able to provide adequate security. My colleagues in Sweden had many more interviews with people that were fleeing more recent violence, most particularly attacks by the Islamic State.

How does their understanding of religion’s role in society affect their acceptance of “liberal” values (i.e., divorce, abortion, same-sex unions)? 

We were definitely interested in exploring what we ended up defining as “clash of values”, which mostly concerned the role of religion in society and sexual liberalisation issues. We saw that the idea of having equal citizenship, which is something they identified as lacking in the Middle East, is clashing with the idea that lifestyle minorities should enjoy the same rights. There was a sense that with the UK being a Christian heritage country, that should influence its legislation on such topics. We had quite a few interviewees point out that should there be a discrepancy between the Bible and national law, they would adhere to what the Bible says. So, we do see that it could potentially lead to issues but not many have voiced this concern in society. Notably, there was the case of a Coptic British Airways employee, who took her case to the European Court of Human Rights, because she argued that she should have been allowed to wear the cross, just as other minorities were allowed to wear signs of their religion. As many Copts work in the medical field, there is also the issue of abortion to consider.  It was doubtlessly an interesting topic to approach and perhaps the findings are not exactly what we thought they might be. We explore this in my recent co-authored article on citizenship in the UK. 

Can the experience of Christian migrants of ME background in the UK be compared to Sweden and Denmark? Is there a country that seems to fare better? If so, why and how?

The idea behind the project was certainly to have that comparative element. We do see quite a lot of similarities, especially when it comes to the role of the church and the problem of misrecognition. We also see strong ties between the communities in the three countries, as well as in the US, Australia and Canada, and these are quite interesting ties. 

In Sweden, the Assyrian/Syriac community is one of the larger diaspora groups in the country, and this is well known in the country, which definitely brings about less of an issue of misrecognition. There are definitely some differences too, especially concerning the church-state relations in the three countries and the different migration policies. Sweden traditionally has been quite opened and welcoming, whereas the UK is quite “mixed” and a lot of the migrants that do come feel some connection with the UK, whether it is through education or the colonialist narrative, where some of the older generations feel like the UK owes them a debt. The country-specific situation is very important. The smaller the community is, the less attention it will receive and the more likely it will be to seek a link with other diaspora communities. The size also affects the affiliation with the community, especially if one is so small. The situation is quite different in Sweden, where communities are larger and more open.

You can find the article here: 

https://lebanesestudies.ojs.chass.ncsu.edu/index.php/mashriq/article/view/288