Border pilgrimage: Ethics of Migration

3 unit graduate course offered by the Franciscan School of Theology

December 2024-March 2025, with credit in the spring semester. – Open to all USD graduate students

This course experience is anchored in a 5-day immersive learning experience visiting ministries that serve migrants along our border. You will encounter migrant families, their stories, front-line service providers, and human rights advocates. The pilgrimage itinerary includes shelters in Tijuana and San Diego, a migrant graveyard in Holtsville, and migrant ministries in the twin cities of Calexico and Mexicali.

La Sagrada Familia by Kelly Latimore © https://kellylatimoreicons.com/

Here is a tentative schedule:

• Pre-trip evening meetings on Zoom: December 3, 2024, and January 7, 2025
• Five-day immersion to Jacumba, Tijuana, Calexico, Mexicali: January 22-26, 2025 (full days)
• Post-trip evening classes on Zoom: February 4 and 18, March 4 and 18, 2025

This course nurtures ethical reasoning skills using the See>Judge>Act methodology, and a moral imagination for a more compassionate world. Students will develop and deepen their own moral vision informed by human rights, political philosophy, Catholic social teaching, Biblical wisdom, feminist ethics, liberation theology and the moral vision of Pope Francis. As a result of this class, students will be able to

1. Analyze the moral discourses and rhetorical strategies that shape societal responses   to refugees, migrants, and migration;
2. Design and deliver moral arguments that address contested topics in migration;
3. Propose ethical solutions guided by compassion, spirituality, and social innovation.

This course provides credit toward the Interdisciplinary Certificate in Trauma Awareness and Resilience. Student deliverables include reflection on their experiences and the creation of outreach education program materials.

Tuition for this class will be the same as for any other FST class and is covered by financial aid (if applicable). In addition, each student will pay a program cost for the pilgrimage.

This will cover:
• bonded transportation with a professional driver
• one night at a hotel in Calexico
• several meals with migrants at shelters, and
• contributions to honoraria for migrant serving organizations.

In addition, each student will have to pay for several meals while on pilgrimage. FST is securing funding to cover some expenses. The precise amount of program cost will be determined in the fall.

MTS-FT students are encouraged to consider taking this course, although they will not get course credit for it. They would have to pay for travel to and from San Diego and local hotel, food, and transportation costs.

Each student must possess and carry a passport.

Your instructor, Keith Douglass Warner OFM,
is an Associate Professor of Ethics & Spirituality at FST and a practical social ethicist.

Publications
Articles from the 2024 Border Pilgrimage

A tale of 2 realities: Immigration, advocacy, and faith in America

At burial ground for unidentified migrants, sisters pray for the dead

On US-Mexico border pilgrimage, sisters ponder response to migrant hardships

More on the See>Judge>Act methodology applied to ethics of migration