What small boats tell us about belonging

Do I belong to these politics? And do these politics belong to me?

George Pitcher

George is a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and an Anglican priest.

A grainy surveillance picture of an rusty boat overloaded with people

A small boat overloaded with migrants.

BBC.

Our son used to say that “home is where the dogs are”, as he was greeted by them. It’s a variation on “home is where the heart is”. Either way, it means that a sense of home isn’t just about place or geography, so much as family and, relatedly, the familiar.

If home were simply an address, candidates in an election campaign wouldn’t bother knocking on doors to meet people. To be familiar is to meet people where they are, circumstantially as well as literally on their doorstep.

To date, the solution to the refugee crisis has been to “stop the boats”, as if our principal concern is with rubber dinghies. We’ve still not addressed the people in those boats; we’re not familiar with them, their circumstances and motivations.

I’d hazard a guess that a common desire among those who flee persecution and mortal danger is something else associated with familiarity – a sense of belonging.

The refugee belongs nowhere, until she or he reaches a new and safe home. Indeed, all of us know we’re home only when we’re somewhere we belong.

Somewheres are rooted in place and community; Anywheres are footloose and and educationally privileged. To which I would add the global category of migrants, who are Nowheres.

This is Refugee Week (17-23 June) and Thursday 20 June is World Refugee Day. It’s theme this year is “Our Home”, which is why I started this column on the nature of familiarity and belonging.

Out of which arise two questions: Do I belong to this country? And does this country belong to me? The first is fairly straightforward in a practical sense – I have a British passport and pay my taxes here, so yes I do. The second question is more complex, more of which in a moment.

When it comes to sovereign governments, the questions move from first to third person. Do you belong to (or in) this country and does this country belong to you? Again, the first question is about paperwork. The second, however, becomes crucially about exclusivity.

Exclusive ownership reaches its abhorrent nadir in a BBC2 documentary this week titled Dead Calm: Killing in the Med?, which provides evidence that the Greek coastguard has been employing masked vigilantes to cast adrift landed refugees, including women and children, in international waters and, in some cases, to throw migrants overboard to their deaths. A story told alongside the capsizing, through incompetence or otherwise, of the rust-tub Adriana, in which more than 600 migrants drowned a year ago.

These are matters for international law. But it shows where treating migrants like cargo, rather than people, takes us. It’s a mindset that could start with repellent (in both senses) wave machines, as considered by a former UK home secretary.

None of which arises if the criteria of belonging are applied. Former Prospect editor David Goodhart famously wrote that a key electoral demographic could be defined in Somewheres and Anywheres. Somewheres are rooted in place and community; Anywheres are footloose and and educationally privileged. To which I would add the global category of migrants, who are Nowheres (see above).

The key here is having nowhere to belong. Former PM Theresa May talked of “citizens of nowhere” in 2016, but she meant globe-trotting tax-exiles and the like. I mean Nowhere people, with nowhere to go – and it’s toxic for all of us that there are so many of them.

This is where the question “does this country belong to me?” carries so much human freight (like a small boat, as it happens).

To belong is an atavistic human need. American psychologist Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs places belonging and love as principal needs in his pyramid between basic physicalities (such as safety) and self-fulfilment at the apex. “Belongingness”, a sense of home, is vital for human stability.

This is where the question “does this country belong to me?” carries so much human freight (like a small boat, as it happens). Simply to repel refugees like they’re someone else’s problem is massively to miss a point, because they’re going to carry on looking for somewhere to belong. So they’re going to keep coming.

Maslow identified religious groups as one of those offering a sense of belonging. I would guess as much as two-thirds of the congregation I’ve looked after over the past decade came to church for that sense of belonging, which we’re called to offer to the despised and marginalised as well as the Somewheres and Anywheres.

Miroslav Volf has written here that “God created the world to live in it” and therefore, I contend, belongs to it. So we’re called to “live in more homelike ways”, which I define as a sense of familiarity and belonging. That’s the theology of it.

We are now facing the politics of it. Nationalism is not enough. We need leaders who can solve this at a global level, which is both a political and a theological imperative.

Perhaps a way of reframing my questions, in this Refugee Week as we ponder how to vote, is: “Do I belong to these politics? And do these politics belong to me?”

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Leading

Politics

22 May 2024

7 min read

Leaders wanted for these testing times

We need leadership that is famous for fifteen miles not fifteen minutes.

Elizabeth Wainwright

Elizabeth Wainwright is a writer, coach and walking guide. She's a former district councillor and has a background in international development.

A deflated looking woman stands aside from a protest rally, holding a small doll of herself that reads Recall Knope'.

Local leadership: Leslie Knope serving Pawnee, Indiana.

We are in a year of elections – locally, nationally, and in the US, and I have been wondering whether it’s true that we get the leaders we deserve, whether political leadership has always felt this way – this detached, divisive, even dangerous? More about ambition than integrity, about individuals more than our common life? Where might we find leaders that can take us into an increasingly hard to navigate, uncertain world?

I find myself thinking back to local leadership and difficult conversations I was involved in as a district councillor. These were often conversations about priorities, and money – mainly, the fact that there wasn’t enough of it, and what there was continued to be pared back and back until only the absolute essentials were covered. Many council tax bills have recently gone up, usually with an explanation of the reason for the rise. Local authorities in Scotland recently voted for a council tax freeze but only after the promise of funding from the Scottish government to make up the shortfall. During my time on the council, we would write letter after letter to government ministers seeking clarity about grants or cuts. When extra funding was announced we were pitted against other councils to bid for meagre pots of money, taking time away from officers who were already stretched too thin. Each councillor, each officer, each member of the community we served had their own idea about how to approach budgeting and spending. Sometimes those ideas aligned, but often they did not. Councils are in an impossible situation.

And yet decisions made at this level impact us all. National leaders might set the direction, but local leaders steward and implement and envision and listen – they are close to the people they serve, their decisions impact us all day-to-day: councils are responsible for things like children’s services, highways, housing people, parks and pools, and lots more

The people who have played the biggest role in my life have been the people that made me feel valued, seen, heard, capable.

Conversations about how to fund local authorities are difficult at any time, but especially so now, with crises coming from every angle – cost of living, climate change, ongoing post-covid recovery, austerity, and so on. To be a leader now – nationally yes, but especially locally, means making sure that essential services keep functioning despite lack of funding or clarity from government, and whilst also tackling climate change and all the other pieces of our fragmenting world. To be a leader now who shows vision and humanity and care despite the seemingly cynical and hurting spirit of the age – is, I think, a test of the meaning of leadership. This test of leadership doesn’t just face local and national government though. It faces all of us right now as we contemplate an unknowable future.

Essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson believed that “our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be”, and we are all capable of helping others be what they can be – whether a neighbour, a colleague, a community, a team, an organisation, others we come into contact with; we can all lead. Author, poet, and civil rights activist Maya Angelou said that “people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” The people who have played the biggest role in my life have been the people that made me feel valued, seen, heard, capable. They have seen who I am, and who I could be, and they walk with me as I move in that direction. I think the best leaders do this too.

It is not glamourous, but, like a lighthouse that shines by just staying where it is, it calls people, lights the way, watches, serves, guides.

In contrast, the worst leaders seem to cling to traditional ideas of power, to control more than setting people free, to achieving their goals through any means necessary. I think of authoritarian regimes that rig elections and limit freedoms, and corporations that pursue profit at the expense of employees and the environment, and political campaigns that prioritise controlling the narrative over informing people. These embody warped leadership traits. And these warped ideas of leadership are given airtime, they fuel our news and our social media feeds and our anxiety. They make us angry, but they can also disempower us and close off the possibility that there is another kind of leadership, one more aligned with the Old English root of the word ‘leader’, meaning ‘one who guides and brings forth’. There are, though, places we can look that point to that other kind of leadership – to something more beautiful.

One place is my own doorstep. Here, there are people that see a need and organise people to fill it – whether hunger, loneliness, lovelessness, this is a kind of roll-up-your-sleeves leadership, the kind that is famous for fifteen miles not fifteen minutes. It is not glamourous, but, like a lighthouse that shines by just staying where it is, it calls people, lights the way, watches, serves, guides.

I try to hold on to the fact that we do not need to wait for national elections to call forth the kind of leaders we want.

Another place is the gospel, where again and again Jesus turned traditional ideas of leadership upside down. He taught that it must serve, not be served; that it can be great through humility not self-importance. He criticised religious leaders for seeking prestige and personal gain. And Jesus did not just teach this stuff, he lived it – he washed the feet of his disciples, he empowered them rather than wielded authority over them. He lived as a shepherd that leads and tends his flock with his love. He laid down his life for his friends, for all of us. And this I think is where leadership starts to look a lot like love. Jesus showed how true leadership that transforms individuals and communities, that heals division and brings people together, is led and motivated by love, not power. He taught that leadership without love is hollow and even harmful. He showed that leadership, and the love that fuels it, guides and inspires and cares for people. We need these kinds of leaders now more than ever. My own experience tells me that hard conversations become easier to navigate when care, humility, and listening are present.

In the UK, many of us are trying to get the measure of Rishi Sunak and Kier Starmer. An Ipsos poll in February explored how the public view these and other political leaders – a significant number were unclear about what they both stood for, but Starmer was ahead of Sunak in various leadership traits including experience, capability, strength. I want to know what other traits we’re seeking and demanding of our leaders nationally, locally and in ourselves. On the council I served on, I saw elected councillors asleep in meetings, ill-prepared, voted in because people did not think their vote or questions or care made a difference. On some level at least we do get the leaders we deserve – those we are prepared to be curious about, and call out, or encourage, or demand more of; more than just the ability to stay awake during meetings, more than just capability and strength, but also aliveness, care, compassion, humility, love.

We need to demand more of our national leaders, especially now. But I try to hold on to the fact that we do not need to wait for national elections to call forth the kind of leaders we want. We can call them forth in ourselves, in each other, in our communities – these are the leaders that impact us closely, every day. I think of some of the best leaders I have known: theirs was a leadership of passion more than position, invested in people more than prestige, offering both humility and vision – a combination that feels hard to find in our current political landscape. They call to mind what writer and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry said, that: “if you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.” Good leaders will help us see and navigate this endless ocean, these present storms – cost of living, conflict, division, ecological and economic unravelling. They remind us, like the gospel does, that the ship is a means to an end – one of new horizons, of togetherness, of love for this beautiful wide world.