On exile, agency, and being guest
Nuam Hatzaw reflects on the paradoxes of migration and hospitality
It feels sadly fortuitous that I am writing this on the day it was announced that from this month onwards the UK government will halt study visas for people from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Myanmar and Sudan.
by Nuam Hatzaw
In the past few months, I’ve been thinking a lot about the country of my birth. I was born in Myanmar, in a small village in the northwest region of Chin State. Although my tribal and ethnic affiliations – and a long history of tense majority–minority relations – mean that I identify first with my ethnic group, the Zomi (a predominantly Christian ethnic minority from northern Chin State), before I identify as Burmese, nevertheless this news weighs heavy on my heart. I am not personally affected by this policy, but I cannot help but think of my fellow countrymen and women who have spent years studying and working hard in Britain, paying expensive tuition fees and enduring the struggles of life in a new world, away from their families and everything familiar – only to be told they are not welcome to stay and make a home here. It feels cruel and unfair. Their forced return sits uneasily alongside my own exile of sorts.
Last month marked the five-year anniversary of the 2021 Myanmar coup d’état, when the democratically elected ruling party was overthrown by the military. Since then, the country has endured civil war, unrest, and economic and social insecurity. It has been more than six years since I set foot in the country of my birth – and more than six years of slowly coming to terms with the fact that it may be a long wait before I can go home again.
This exile-of-sorts is partly self-imposed. While the country is unstable, while members of my family have to flee the fighting or forced conscription, while my people struggle to rebuild their livelihoods after years of civil war and economic volatility, it seems to me unethical to return. By virtue of my passport and privilege, I have the power to come and go as I please – yet so many of my compatriots must risk their lives crossing treacherous seas for the chance of safety elsewhere. How then, can I, in good conscience, go home and enjoy the food, the comforts, the sights, all the while knowing that my cousins ache for the very same pleasures that I can easily indulge in, without having to worry I would be conscripted, or knowing that I can easily leave if I feel unsafe? So I stay away.
So it is a strange exilic condition I have found myself in, and one that is at odds with the situation created by the government’s recent crackdown. I, with citizenship and security, long to return to the country of my birth, my family, my ancestors – yet feel unable to. Meanwhile, Myanmar graduates here in Britain, who have also built their lives in this country, have no choice but to leave. I do not envy their position, nor would I expect them to envy mine. We both suffer from an absence of agency and choice.
Here at Acts 11, we often talk about the importance of the agency of migrants – because so often, the narrative around welcome and hospitality can actually be disempowering. Of course, we should welcome and embrace migrants and foreigners among us; it is a biblical imperative, as passages like Exodus 23:9, Leviticus 19:33–34, and Deuteronomy 10:19 remind us. But welcome and hospitality must go further than that.
There is an inherent power imbalance between host and guest. We are comfortable playing host because we hold the power. We know where the plates and linens are kept; we decide what food is served and who sits where; we choose which parts of our home are open and which are forbidden. The guest is always on the receiving end – and even then, there are unspoken limits on what can reasonably be asked of the host.
When announcing the change to visa rules, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood was quoted as saying she was “taking the unprecedented decision to refuse visas for those nationals seeking to exploit our generosity.” In anti-immigrant rhetoric, migrants are always positioned as taking from society, profiting off the system without giving anything back – while the host society is cast as the generous, altruistic provider who is exploited.
Setting aside scepticism about how generous and welcoming Britain has actually been, I was struck by the word generosity, which is so closely linked to the idea of hosting. When we are always the host, we can feel as though we are doing the kind, caring work that God calls us to. But there is also generosity in giving up power and control – in stepping aside to let others serve.
Think of the many times in the Gospels when Jesus himself was the guest. As an itinerant preacher he wandered from town to town, staying with friends and disciples – Zacchaeus, Simon Peter, the siblings Mary, Martha and Lazarus. He ate from their tables, slept in their homes, and allowed himself to be nourished and looked after. Even as Jesus offered the bread of life, he also allowed himself to be served – to have his needs met, to be waited upon. In doing so, he equalised the power dynamics between himself, as rabbi, and his followers.
Jesus models a receptivity that offers a better way forward in our relationships with those who are strangers among us. Being guest means that the foreigner, the migrant, the asylum-seeker, can move into the position of host – with all the joys and privileges that come from sharing and giving something of ourselves with those in our company. In so doing, they gain a small bit of the agency and choice that hostile systems and experiences so often strip from them. We must move beyond seeing migrants as passive recipients of aid, second-hand clothes, coffees, meals, and English lessons. We must begin to see them as God sees them – valued, important, and created with purpose, skills, and character.
This is not about instrumentalising migrants or reducing them to what they can contribute. But we must recognise that playing host, however well-intentioned, is not a sustainable model of relationship, because it continually recreates an imbalance of power and privilege. It may be some time before I can conscientiously and safely return to Myanmar. For the Afghan, Cameroonian, Sudanese, and Burmese students who must leave as soon as their education is completed – despite the instability that may await them at home – the wait may not be as long. Though we may desire opposite things (a returning; a staying), we are bound together by our lack of agency, our inability to choose our own movements – or lack of movement.
