Expanding Hearts and Minds? Evaluation of an Ecumenical Educational Program on Immigration

Abstract

The persistence of xenophobia and nativism in the United States has encouraged groups and organizations in the civil society to promote mutual understanding and collaboration between immigrants and native citizens. This study evaluated an ecumenical educational program on immigration organized by a faith-based group of volunteers with those goals in mind. The program was held in fall 2018 in Baltimore, Maryland. The evaluation was based on participant responses to an exit questionnaire and on a focus group with members of the community group responsible for the program. The study concludes that ecumenical workshops on immigration with instructional and dialogical activities likely improve participants’ knowledge of immigration and participants’ inclinations to mutual understanding and collaboration between immigrants and native citizens. Personal testimonials by immigrants are especially conducive to those outcomes.

Keywords

Immigration-migration evaluation research dialogue religion

The persistence of xenophobia and nativism in the United States has encouraged groups and organizations in the civil society to promote mutual understanding and collaboration between immigrants and native U.S. citizens. Multicultural potlucks in churches, mentorship of newcomers by U.S. citizens, multicultural neighborhood get-togethers and community dialogues between immigrants and native residents are among the many activities held in the pursuit of a society that stays cohesive in the face of immigration-driven diversity. In Baltimore, Maryland, the Latino Racial Justice Circle (LRJC) is a group of volunteers dedicated to creating cross-cultural, faith-based communities focused on spiritual growth and improving social relationships. The group operates under the nonprofit organization Call to Action Maryland, which educates and mobilizes Maryland communities to perform Catholic social justice teaching.

In fall 2018, the LRJC planned and conducted a day-long ecumenical educational program on immigration with the goal of educating native U.S. citizens about the realities of immigration in the United States and of promoting mutual understanding and collaboration between native U.S. citizens and immigrant communities in Baltimore. The program consisted of a series of micro-talks and personal testimonials, an exercise of simulation of deportation, and a dialogue. This study shows the results of a mixed-methods evaluation of this program, which was used not only to inform program development at the LRJC but also to discuss broader arguments about instructional-dialogical programs on immigration and about the role of religion in immigration politics.

The remainder of this article is organized in four sections. In section “Literature Review,” the researcher presents a review of the literature on instructional-dialogical programs for mutual understanding and collaboration across differences and of the literature on the role of religion in immigration politics. Both literatures informed the LRJC ecumenical educational program on immigration (from now on, referred to as “the workshop”). In section “Organization, Implementation and Evaluation of the Workshop,” the researcher describes the organization, implementation and evaluation of the workshop. In section “Results,” the researcher presents the findings of the evaluation. In section “Conclusions and Recommendations,” the researcher discusses the findings in light of broader arguments about instructional-dialogical programs and about the role of religion in immigration politics. The researcher also considers the implications of the findings for groups and organizations seeking to promote mutual understanding and collaboration between immigrants and native U.S. citizens.

Literature Review

Instructional-Dialogical Programs

Hundreds of communities in the United States have used dialogues to improve relations among diverse groups and address issues of public concern. The purpose of these dialogues is to facilitate mutual understanding based on personal experiences and to promote collaboration across differences rather than to debate opposing viewpoints. Scholars and organizations in the civil society have developed dialogue models with both theoretical and practical dimensions. This review discusses those dialogue models, with a focus on a prominent dialogue model that, like the LRJC workshop, combines instructional activities with dialogue: the Intergroup Dialogue. Developed at the University of Michigan, the Intergroup Dialogue is a model of face-to-face engagement among diverse participants that seeks to create understanding of social identities and of social inequalities, to foster relationships across identity groups and to build individual and collaborative capacity for change toward social justice (Nagda et al. 2012). The model has usually been applied to groups of college students. The Sustained Dialogue and the Study Circles are two other prominent dialogue models.

The social psychology of intergroup relations and peace studies are the theoretical foundation of most dialogue models. Numerous studies have found support to contact theory, which claims that “interaction between members of two different groups will result in a reduction of misconceptions and prejudice and consequently lead to the formation of a positive attitude toward members of the target group” (Berg 2015:28). However, intergroup experiences are more likely to result in positive mutual understanding in the presence of certain conditions. For Allport (1954:281), these conditions are as follows: (1) majority and minority group members share equal status along many lines, (2) institutions support contact between the groups, (3) the groups are in pursuit of common goals, and (4) a certain amount of cooperation to achieve the common goals.

For Pettigrew (1998), prejudice is reduced by extended intergroup contact, which is more easily maintained in the presence of (1) potential friendship among participants, (2) individual readiness for intergroup experience (individuals with previous intergroup experience are more likely to engage with the dialogue), (3) sequential facilitation techniques (organization of a dialogue in three phases: identification of similarities, identification of differences, and adoption of a new identification by setting of a purpose for the group as a whole), and (4) varied and repeated dialogue in multiple settings. Although long intergroup contact is more likely to reduce prejudice than short intergroup contact, one-time meetings might be planting the seeds for future reduction of prejudice since the process is cumulative (Rodenborg and Huynh 2006:41).

In most models for community dialogues across differences, the goal is to change individual attitudes and social interactions on the community level but with an awareness of the social structural causes of the problems under discussion. The Intergroup Dialogue assumes that conflict is embedded in social structures but poses that constructive engagement between groups can help individuals and groups move from conflict to cooperation. The Intergroup Dialogue also assumes that, in intergroup contact, there are differences of affection (how each group feels about relations with the other), differences of analysis (how each group thinks about relations with the other), and differences of action (how each group acts to improve relations with the other). According to previous research, dominant and subordinate groups differ in all three aspects (Nagda et al. 2012:211–13). The model ascertains that dialogical communication (which involves suspending judgment and deep listening by participants) coupled with communication for critical thinking in the dialogue allow for the bridging of affective, analytical, and action asymmetries (Nagda et al. 2012).

Dialogue models have specific rules and procedures to reproduce in practice, as much as possible, the ideal conditions and communication processes for positive intergroup contact. A facilitator should always be present in a dialogue to guide the discussions (Herzig 2011; Hope in the Cities 1995; McCoy, Flavin, and Reaven 1997; Study Circles Resource Center 1998; U.S. Department of Justice 1998) and enforce ground rules (ARISE and Labor Council for Latin American Advancement [LCLAA] 2011; Herzig 2011; Study Circles Resource Center 1998; U.S. Department of Justice 1998). In Intergroup Dialogues, two co-facilitators (one from each social identity group) are present (Nagda et al. 2012:217). Effective dialogues depend on ground rules consistent with the dialogue goals. The agreement on ground rules is already an act of cooperation across differences. Participants should be open to learning and changing their minds (McCoy et al. 1997; U.S. Department of Justice 1998). Participants should speak from their own experiences; they should not speak on behalf of a group or be interpreted as such (ARISE and LCLAA 2011; Everyday Democracy 2008; Herzig 2011; McCoy et al. 1997; Study Circles Resource Center 1998). In Intergroup Dialogues, participants are advised to speak honestly and to listen carefully, avoiding defensive behavior. This dialogic process can help bridge the affective asymmetry in intergroup contact (Nagda et al. 2012:214).

In most dialogue models, conversations unfold in a structured way through cumulative stages. Often, they start with introductions and the establishment of ground rules, followed by discussions (usually of personal stories, commonalities, and differences between groups and intergroup tensions) and ending with a deliberation of individual and collaborative actions to solve intergroup problems. In the beginning of Intergroup Dialogues, facilitators also acknowledge the history of conflicts between the groups and state the necessity of dialogue to promote cooperation across differences (Nagda et al. 2012). Dialogue questions should be open ended, without a right or wrong answer, inviting participants to think critically about the issue, in terms of hopes and fears, what is appreciated and what is troubling, advantages and disadvantages (Herzig 2011; McCoy et al. 1997; New York Council for the Humanities 2018; Study Circles Resource Center 1998). Questions should also invite people to reflect on and speak from their life experience (ARISE and LCLAA 2011; Herzig 2011; McCoy et al. 1997). When participants think critically about how their identities and experiences are related to a social system of advantages and disadvantages, they are more likely to overcome the analytical asymmetry that is often present in intergroup contact (Nagda et al. 2012:214). In addition to discussion questions, Intergroup Dialogues include instructional activities, such as readings and writing assignments and structured activities that illustrate concepts and processes of learning (Nagda et al. 2012).

Scholars have assessed dialogue outcomes using enter and exit attitudinal surveys, thematic analysis of self-reflection papers by participants, and games to assess behavior. The empirical literature on Intergroup Dialogues shows they produce awareness of identity oppression and social inequities, cross-group communication skills and relationships, and intergroup cooperation for addressing identity-based social justice issues (Edwards 2017). Participation in a Sustained Dialogue was found to increase trust between people of different ethnicities among participants who self-selected into the dialogue but not among participants who had been nominated to the dialogue (Svensson and Brounéus 2013). Participation in this dialogue also increased the importance attributed by participants to ethnic identity and their perceived discrimination (Svensson and Brounéus 2013). These changes were observed in attitudinal surveys but not in trust games with participants. This difference suggests that the dialogue might change attitude (inclination) but not behavior (action) (Svensson and Brounéus 2013). In an assessment of Sustained Dialogues in college, Diaz and Perrault (2010:41) suggested that the dialogues affected participants across a range of civic arenas and aspects of life beyond graduation, including individuals becoming more intellectually curious, cognitively sophisticated, emotionally empathetic, and more skilled at communicating across differences. Research on Study Circles suggests that increased participation on volunteer boards and a greater capacity to solve public problems are associated with Study Circles (Scully and McCoy 2005).

Even though religion is important for the formation of immigration attitudes (see below), none of the dialogue models reviewed here gives relevance to religion and its implications for immigration and interracial relations. Most research on Intergroup Dialogue has analyzed data from dialogues on race (primarily) and gender (secondarily) (Edwards 2017). The evaluation of an instructional-dialogical program with emphasis on religion and immigration is thus an original contribution to this literature.

Religion and Immigration Politics

The LRJC is a faith-based group and recruited workshop participants primarily from local religious groups and organizations. The dialogue explicitly addressed issues of religion in connection with immigration. A sizable literature has investigated the relationship between religion and immigration politics, including studies of the effects of religion on individual attitudes toward immigrants and studies of faith-based immigrant advocacy.

As stated by Breitkreutz (2011:14), Bloom, Arikan, and Courtemanche (2015:1), and Paterson (2017:37), the study of the effects of religion on immigration attitudes has produced mixed conclusions. While some scholars found that religion can increase the salience of in/out group boundaries and induce negative attitudes toward immigrants, others found that religion can fuel feelings of solidarity toward immigrants. Beyond this dualist understanding, recent studies found that the effects of religion on immigration attitudes are contingent on multiple factors: (1) the aspect of religion under consideration (religious belonging, religious behavior, and religious beliefs), (2) the intersection of religion with other types of social stratification (race/ethnicity, class, and political ideology), (3) the region where the individual has lived (Bloom et al. 2015; Brenneman 2005; Brown and Brown 2017; Kang 2017; Knoll 2009; McDaniel, Nooruddin, and Shortle 2011; Paterson 2017; Wallsten and Nteta 2016). Although these studies have produced a more nuanced understanding of the role of religion on the formation of immigration attitudes, they vary considerably in the aspect of religiosity under investigation and in which religious groups are examined. This makes them only partially comparable, making it difficult to arrive at a balance of the literature.

If religion has been found to play a role in the formation of attitudes on immigration, it should not be a surprise that research has also concluded that religion has animated social mobilization around immigrant rights. However, while some aspects of religion have been found to generate anti-immigrant attitudes, faith-based mobilization around immigrant rights in the United States has been largely proimmigrant, consistently with the official stance of most religious elites in the country. Faith-based proimmigrant activists have used Abrahamic notions of loving the alien, welcoming the stranger, caring for the poor, and the sacredness of the family to justify immigrant rights (Freeland 2010; Hondagneu-Sotelo 2008; Park 1998). Hondagneu-Sotelo (2008) identified Christian, Muslim, and Jewish proimmigrant activists based in the United States who used their religion to question a fundamentalist application of nation-state boundaries, the idea that national immigration laws must be strictly obeyed regardless of how flawed or outdated they are.

Some faith-based strategies and programs have been especially successful in the promotion of solidarity between immigrants and native U.S. citizens. Narratives and testimonials by activists and immigrants are two of the main strategies through which faith-based immigrant activism creates collective identity among a diverse membership, which has been crucial for political mobilization in the sanctuary movement (Chinchilla, Hamilton, and Loucky 2009:120; Freeland 2010:504–5). Faith-based activists have also adopted public educational programs, including information sessions at churches and other venues, film screenings, and theatrical productions (Chinchilla et al. 2009:120).

Another example is the Posada sin Fronteras, “an interfaith, predominantly Christian celebration of cross-border unity and protest against the social injustice of U.S. border policies” (Hondagneu-Sotelo 2008:134). At the Posada sin Fronteras, “Anglo-American, English-speaking Christians come together with Mexican Americans and Spanish-speaking Mexican immigrants to reimagine a world without the borders of nation-states and without the borders of race,” resulting in an experience of unity and “momentary blurring of religious and racial borders” (Hondagneu-Sotelo 2008:186). Furthermore, proimmigrant groups based on different religious traditions have formed interfaith coalitions for immigrant rights, suggesting a potential for ecumenical work in support of immigrants.

Organization, Implementation, and Evaluation of the Workshop

The organization, implementation, and evaluation of the LRJC workshop followed the principles of community-based research. In summer 2018, one of the leaders of the LRJC proposed to the group the organization of an event to educate members of local faith communities on immigration. As a member of the LRJC, the researcher joined the planning committee of the event and became responsible for the design of the dialogue component of the event and for the evaluation of the program. Following the intergroup dialogue model, the workshop combined instructional activities with critical dialogue. The workshop consisted of a series of microtalks of 10 to 20 minutes that focused on different aspects of immigration, with each microtalk followed by a testimonial by an immigrant who related to the topic of the microtalk. The topics were immigration facts, immigration law, immigrant entrepreneurship, immigrant education, and immigrant mental health. Between each microtalk and testimonial, speakers answered a few questions from the audience. Workshop participants also had a 10-minute simulation exercise to reflect on the emotional trauma of family separation due to deportation. The last activity was a 40-minute dialogue in which, consistently with the sequential organization of most dialogue models, participants shared personal stories, feelings, and thoughts about immigration and race; explored commonalities and differences between immigrants and native citizens; discussed visions of how participants’ communities should deal with immigration and race; and proposed actions that participants should take to achieve that vision.

As such, the workshop had activities with an affective dimension (the sharing of personal experiences and feelings at testimonials and during the dialogue), activities with an intellectual dimension (provision of information and answering of participants’ questions during microtalks and critical thinking during the dialogue) and ended with an action-oriented activity (the proposition of and agreement on actions at the end of the dialogue). These dimensions correspond to the three asymmetries that, according to the Intergroup Dialogue model, are present in intergroup contact: affective, analytical, and action. The workshop, however, was significantly different from the Intergroup Dialogue for its short duration (one day vs. one academic semester).

To recruit workshop participants, members of the LRJC distributed flyers about the workshop to local public libraries, religious groups and organizations, colleges, and neighborhood groups and associations (totaling 43 groups and organizations). Most of the distribution was to religious groups or organizations (a total of 22). The LRJC also created a Facebook event page for the workshop and paid to boost the event on the social media platform, which made the event page reach 1371 people in the Baltimore area in the week before the event. As a result of these efforts, there were 28 participants in the workshop.

One week before the event, as suggested by dialogue models, the researcher trained LRJC members to work as dialogue facilitators in the workshop. Each facilitator received a guide for the dialogue, which stated the ground rules, organization, dialogue questions, evaluation procedures, and recommendations for effective facilitation. At the training, facilitators simulated the dialogue, with one LRJC member assigned to serve as a facilitator and the researcher performing the role of a participant with a negative attitude toward immigrants. At the end of the training, the researcher pointed out when the facilitator was acting according to the recommendations and when not. Participants of this meeting also made a few suggestions to the researcher about the dialogue. They suggested changes in the language of some dialogue questions to make them more culturally appropriate from the perspective of immigrants. They also asked the researcher to determine on which questions facilitators should spend more or less time considering time constraints. The researcher instructed facilitators to focus on questions that referred to race and religion, two key themes for the LRJC, and relevant conditions for immigrant-native relations.

Based on theories about the role of religion in immigration politics and on existing models for dialogue across cultural differences, the researcher formulated dialogue questions to have workshop participants critically reflect on their social identities and develop sympathy toward immigrants. For instance, at the start of the dialogue, participants were asked to say their names and to state which immigrant generation they belonged to, which could lead people to understand that immigration is part of everyone’s background. Another question asked participants what their religion says about immigrants in the sacred texts or in messages from clergy, which are usually favorable to immigrants. The dialogue also had a question for participants to reflect on whether people’s response to immigrants depends on the race, ethnicity, or religion of the immigrant and a question on what faith communities could do to address tensions and promote collaboration between immigrants and native citizens. Furthermore, the inclusion of testimonials by immigrants in the workshop followed findings of studies of the sanctuary movement that acknowledged the importance of such testimonials in political mobilization in support of immigrants. Following existing dialogue models, the researcher also formulated ground rules for workshop participants to structure a positive contact experience between immigrant and native participants. The dialogue questions and ground rules are presented in the Supplemental Appendix.

The workshop took place at a private Catholic school in southeast Baltimore, the area of the city with the largest population of Latin American immigrants. At the workshop, participants were split into six groups of four to five participants plus one trained LRJC facilitator. Each group had one or two immigrants. Facilitators distributed a hand out with the ground rules for participants, which were read out loud by each group. At the end of the dialogue, the 28 participants completed a questionnaire in which they provided basic descriptive information (national origin, age, gender, race/ethnicity, level of education, religious affiliation, and political orientation), evaluated the dialogue and reflected on the experience. Facilitators did not answer the questionnaire.

The questionnaire had closed and open-ended questions. Some items of the questionnaire asked participants to self-report measurements of the expected outcomes of participation in the dialogue (knowledge of immigration, mutual understanding, and inclination to collaboration between immigrants and native citizens). The researcher analyzed the questionnaire data using MS Excel for closed answers (quantitative data) and NVivo for open answers (qualitative data). The questionnaire is presented in the Supplemental Appendix. The quantitative analysis focused on a combination of outcome indicators but also included an examination of outcome indicators against demographic variables. The qualitative analysis followed the method of thematic analysis, in which the researcher identifies and organizes patterns within the data (the themes), which are used to describe phenomena associated with the research question. The analysis follows six steps: familiarization with the data, generation of initial codes, coding and searching for themes among codes, reviewing themes, defining and naming themes, and producing the final report.

In addition, after the event, the researcher conducted a focus group with LRJC members to discuss the workshop and the findings from the questionnaire data. The focus group had 13 participants, including the three members of the workshop organizing committee, four dialogue facilitators (one of whom was also in the organizing committee), five workshop participants, and two members who did not attend the workshop. At the workshop, while participants completed the questionnaires, facilitators completed a form with observation notes about (1) what worked particularly well in the dialogue, (2) what did not work well in the dialogue, (3) the main themes that emerged from participants’ conversations, (4) the main points of agreement among participants, and (5) the main points of disagreement among participants. Facilitators referred to those notes during the focus group. The discussion was audio recorded, transcribed, and thematically analyzed. The final conclusions were based on a triangulation of findings from the closed questionnaire items, the open questionnaire items, and the focus group.

Results

In Table 1, the reader can see the frequency distribution of workshop participants according to demographic variables. Most participants were white (57 percent), Catholic (71 percent), liberal (80 percent), women (56 percent), and adults over 45 years old (61 percent). Despite the wide recruiting efforts of the LRJC, which focused on organizations rather than individuals and included the distribution of flyers in public libraries of predominantly conservative suburbs of Baltimore, the profile of participants ended up being similar to the typical profile of LRJC members (white Catholic liberals). It is likely that attendees were motivated to join the workshop because of personal connections to LRJC members.

Table 1.

Frequency Distribution of Participants According to Demographic Variables.

	Frequency
Race
White	16
Hispanic/Latino	8
Black	1
2 or more	3
Total	28
Religion
Catholic	20
Protestant	4
Other	4
Total	28
Ideology
Liberal	20
Moderate	5
Total	25
Gender
Female	15
Male	12
Total	27
Age
25–34	6
35–44	5
45–54	5
55+	12
Total	28
Education
High school	4
College	11
Postgraduate	12
Total	27

Note. Totals per category differ because of missing responses.

The questionnaire contained five questions that asked workshop participants to self-report knowledge of immigration acquired during the workshop (questions 8–12). These questions corresponded to the topics covered in the microtalks. Participants answered according to a Likert scale ranging from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5). A compound index consisting of the average score for those five questions was generated to assess the results. Considering all participants, the compound index was 4.52 (near the midpoint between “agree” and “strongly agree”). After running a series of two-tailed Mann-Whitney tests, the researcher found no statistically significant differences in the compound index across groups of participants. The tests were performed to compare groups with at least five observations. For white versus Latino, the U-value is 38.5, which is not significant at p <.05. For Catholic versus non-Catholic, the U-value is 47, which is not significant at p <.05. For male versus female, the U-value is 78.5, which is not significant at p <.05. For liberal versus moderate, the U-value is 40.5, which is not significant at p <.05.

The questionnaire also contained five questions that asked workshop participants to self-report attitudinal changes resulting from the workshop (questions 13–17). These questions related to mutual understanding and collaboration between immigrants and natives. Participants answered according to a Likert scale ranging from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5). A compound index consisting of the average score for those five questions was generated to assess the results. Considering all participants, the compound index was 4.45 (near the midpoint between “agree” and “strongly agree”). After running a series of two-tailed Mann-Whitney tests, the researcher found no statistically significant differences in the compound index across groups of participants. The tests were performed to compare groups with at least five observations. For white versus Latino, the U-value is 37, which is not significant at p <.05. For Catholic versus non-Catholic, the U-value is 66, which is not significant at p <.05. For male versus female, the U-value is 85.5, which is not significant at p <.05. For liberal versus moderate, the U-value is 38, which is not significant at p <.05.

The questionnaire also asked workshop participants to state what was “particularly helpful” to them in the workshop. The most appreciated component of the workshop was the series of testimonials, which was mentioned by 10 respondents. In the focus group, there was also wide agreement about the appeal of testimonials to workshop participants. According to focus group participants, a careful selection of immigrants willing to share poignant personal stories with the audience was very important for the success of the workshop. In the words of one focus group participant, “Because there is a face. […] It’s not just a statistic anymore.”

Next, six workshop participants expressed in the questionnaire appreciation for activities that promoted empathy, which they articulated, for instance, as “understanding of others” and the “ability to see the world from different perspectives.” This arguably applies to a general aspect of the workshop rather than to any activity in particular. Focus group participants appreciated the simulation of deportation exercise, in which workshop participants not wearing a LRJC t-shirt were abruptly told to leave the room and then asked to reflect on how that felt. Focus group participants referred to the exercise as “great” and “very powerful.”

Four workshop participants singled out the microtalk on immigration law and three workshop participants singled out the microtalk on mental health as particularly helpful activities. At last, three workshop participants singled out the dialogue as especially helpful. It was not possible to discern responses to this question patterned according to demographic characteristics of workshop participants. Thus, testimonials by immigrants were the only activity that clearly stood out as particularly helpful from the perspective of both workshop and focus group participants.

The questionnaire also asked workshop participants for suggestions for improvement and other comments. This question prompted a wide variety of responses but one theme emerged from five responses: to increase the duration and/or frequency of the workshop. This is consistent with the perception of focus group participants, who emphasized the need to extend the duration and/or frequency of the dialogue activity. As one focus group participant said,

it’s awful difficult to shortchange the process [of educating people] when you want to get off on the right foot and plant those seeds. So I just think you need to be open to the possibility of it being more than a one evening.

Several questionnaire responses also suggested additions to the program, such as the distribution of informational handouts, discussion of postevent action items, and a youth component. It was not possible to discern questionnaire responses to this question patterned according to demographic characteristics of workshop participants.

The focus group also indicated the need for more extensive training of facilitators, especially on how facilitators should act for conversations about controversial issues to take place in a dialogue rather than in a debate mode. The focus group conversation suggests that facilitators were able to reflect critically on their role during the dialogue, identifying behaviors that facilitated or hindered the conversations. They agreed that facilitators must keep the dialogue focused and enforce ground rules but not act as referees or take positions. As one focus group participant put it,

we’re all volunteers, so nobody is an expert on facilitation unless you’ve had some special education on this. […] we could have done maybe a better job to talk about the issue of respect in the dialogue conversation, [which is] an important ground rule that everybody really needs to buy into, that these are not debates, these are conversations.

At last, the focus group discussed how religion and race were approached in the dialogue. In relation to race, focus group participants expressed concern with how challenging it is to make people aware of their racial biases without prompting defensive reactions. In relation to religion, focus group participants suggested that, during the dialogues, the term “faith tradition” be used instead of “religion” during future dialogues because the term might have a lighter connotation for participants who do not identify strongly with any institutionalized religion. According to one focus group participant, if you state a question that assumes an affiliation to a formal religious organization “you’re kind of putting those [labels: Catholic, Protestant] in the forefront as an okay and someone [without a formal religious affiliation might] close up.”

Focus group participants also mentioned that, in response to the dialogue question of what your religion says about immigrants, workshop participants brought up the principle of welcoming the stranger, the responsibility of being “my brother’s keeper,” the parable of the Good Samaritan, and the Jewish notion that “we were once strangers in a strange land.” Furthermore, focus group participants said that in response to the dialogue question about actions, people can take to advance the common interests and address the tensions between immigrants and native citizens, workshop participants suggested faith communities work to educate both congregants and clergy on immigration. These conclusions of the focus group are consistent with the high values obtained in the questionnaire for the indicators of attitudinal changes resulting from workshop participation.

Conclusions and Recommendations

The high values of the compound indicators of workshop outcomes suggest that the LRJC program considerably improved participants’ knowledge of immigration and generated feelings of mutual understanding and inclination for collaboration between immigrants and native citizens. Findings from the focus group are consistent with this conclusion. The results of this evaluation are thus in conformance with the results of previous evaluations of instructional-dialogical educational programs.

The findings of this evaluation are also consistent with previous studies of faith-based immigrant advocacy. Studies of the sanctuary movement identified the sharing of testimonials by immigrants at religious congregations as an important strategy to mobilize people in support of immigrants. This study actually went beyond those studies by showing empirical evidence of the efficacy of testimonials. Personal testimonials by immigrants were the most appreciated component of the workshop from the perspective of workshop and focus group participants.

Moreover, dialogue responses to the question of what participants’ religion says about immigrants suggest that dialogue questions connecting religion to immigration can prompt participants to apply religious values to justify proimmigrant stances. Dialogue responses to the question about actions that people can take to advance the common interests and address the tensions between immigrants and native citizens indicate that dialogues on religion and immigration can generate ideas on how faith communities could promote collaboration between immigrants and native citizens.

The conclusions above should be considered in light of methodological limitations of the study. First, participants self-selected into the workshop. One indication that self-selection might have biased the results is the similarity between the profile of participants and the profile of LRJC members. The proportion of participants who identified as having a liberal political ideology was especially pronounced (80 percent). Liberals tend to display more favorable views of immigration and, thus, might be more inclined to participate in a workshop of an immigrant-supporting group and to state positive answers about mutual understanding and collaboration between immigrant and natives. However, as stated by focus group participants, being a liberal does not mean that someone knows immigration facts and law, understands the real-life experiences of immigrants, or has had the opportunity to dialogue about immigration. It is thus plausible that even liberal participants who already had a proimmigrant attitude benefited from the workshop in significant ways. Second, the study relied on posttreatment self-reported outcomes of participation. There was no baseline for comparison of outcomes (questionnaire questions were articulated as “the workshop helped me . . . /motivated me to . . . /gave me . . .”) and we cannot know how accurate self-reported outcomes are in comparison to the actual knowledge and attitudes of participants.

Several recommendations for practitioners and evaluators of faith-based instructional-dialogical programs on immigration can be derived from this study. First, community organizations, local governments and educational institutions should feel encouraged to invest in such programs to improve relations between immigrants and native citizens, given the overall positive results of the present evaluation.

Second, those interested in implementing faith-based instructional-dialogical programs on immigration in the future should reserve more than one day for program activities. Several workshop and focus group participants suggested increasing the duration and/or frequency of the workshop as well as the inclusion of new items in the program, such as the distribution of handouts with information and postevent action items for participants. This recommendation is consistent with the Intergroup Dialogue model. Intergroup Dialogues usually last an entire academic semester and include instructional activities throughout the term.

Third, organizers of faith-based instructional-dialogical programs on immigration should plan for activities that give ample opportunity for immigrant participants to share personal stories, which can precede or be intercalated with dialogue activities. One option is to use personal testimonials by immigrants as prompts for dialogues (instead of using abstract questions posed by a facilitator).

Fourth, organizers of faith-based instructional-dialogical programs on immigration should be very strategic in participant recruiting efforts. In the focus group, participants agreed with the need to reach out to potentially conservative audiences and to partner with organizations that have a conservative membership to have catered workshops instead of holding events open to the general public. In the words of one focus group participant, the LRJC should avoid “preaching to the choir.” Organizers could also strategically target audiences that do not tend to have negative attitudes toward immigrants but play an important role in immigrant integration, such as clergy or parent and teachers associations of religiously affiliated schools.

Fifth, evaluators of faith-based instructional-dialogical programs on immigration should adopt more comprehensive assessment methods. Evaluators could combine entry and exit questionnaires to assess changes in knowledge and attitudes or use a control group of non-workshop participants for comparisons. Combining entry and exit questionnaires would be especially appropriate for workshops longer than one day. An analytically desirable but more time consuming option would be to compare observations of the actual behavior of participants before and after the workshop, possibly using games or simulations.

Related Resources

For more information on programs of the LRJC, please send an e-mail to latinoracialjusticecircle@gmail.com or access the group’s Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/LatinoRacialJusticeCircle/. For an inventory of resources on the intergroup dialogue model, please visit the web site of the Program on Intergroup Relations (IGR) of the University of Michigan (https://igr.umich.edu). Every year, the IGR hosts a National Intergroup Dialogue Institute for people interested in learning the philosophy and techniques of the intergroup dialogue model, which served as a reference for the LRJC workshop.

Supplemental Material

APPENDIX_ – Supplemental material for Expanding Hearts and Minds?: Evaluation of an Ecumenical Educational Program on Immigration

Supplemental material, APPENDIX_ for Expanding Hearts and Minds?: Evaluation of an Ecumenical Educational Program on Immigration by Felipe Amin Filomeno in Journal of Applied Social Science

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the Latino Racial Justice Circle for partnering in this study.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Supplemental Material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

Author Biography

Felipe Amin Filomeno is an Assistant Professor of Political Science and Global Studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). He holds a PhD in Sociology from the Johns Hopkins University. His research applies qualitative, comparative-historical, and community-based methods to understand human development in the context of Latin America and the Latin American diaspora in the United States. He is the author of Monsanto and Intellectual Property in South America (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) and Theories of Local Immigration Policy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).

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