JSRI Mission
From a tradition based upon the principles of Catholic social teaching, the research institute will offer research, social analysis, theological reflection and practical strategies for improving the social and economic conditions in the southern United States and in select parts of the Caribbean and Latin America, with a particular focus on issues of poverty, race, and migration. Through fostering close collaboration with faculty, staff, and students of Loyola University‹within a network of Jesuit social centers in the United States and partnering countries and links with other universities‹the Jesuit Social Research Institute will combine academic research, education, and social action in a new paradigm based on the union of faith and justice, the integrating factor of all works of the Society of Jesus.
To gain further insight about JSRI's mission read The Importance of Social Research published by the Social Secretariat of the Society of Jesus in 2007.
The Need for the Jesuit Social Research Institute
The New Orleans Province of the Society of Jesus serves 10 southern and southwestern areas of the United States: New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina and Tennessee. Loyola University New Orleans, which the Society of Jesus has sponsored for nearly 100 years, hails as one of the major Catholic higher education institutions in this region with an explicit Jesuit educational mission.
While a vision for the Jesuit Social Research Institute preceded Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, with the ensuing floods, which devastated the Gulf Coast region, the need for the Institute became increasingly apparent in the months since the hurricanes. The images of children, women, and elderly people, mostly poor and black, left behind in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina are indelibly etched on the conscience of our nation. They have raised hard questions about how our churches, schools, communities, society, and governments have failed in our moral duty to protect, defend, and uplift our neighbors, the poor in our midst. In our own post-Katrina reflections, the Jesuits of the New Orleans Province have realized that we too have failed in part, that we need to do more to restore right relations and to respond to the “unjustly suffering world” right in our own region.
A disproportionate percentage of persistent and pervasive poverty in the South has been borne by black and Hispanic persons, and chronic poverty has contributed to higher rates of illiteracy, sickness, and incarceration among persons of color. During the last fifteen years, and especially following Hurricane Katrina, there has been a significant increase in the numbers of migrants – both documented and undocumented – in the southern states. More and more immigrants are settling into nontraditional urban and rural receiving communities in the South, where the Hispanic population more than doubled during the 1990’s. The Jesuit Social Research Institute provides practical, collaborative engagement in participatory action research, social analysis and theological reflection, and advocacy related to migration, poverty, and racism. For instance, within the complexity of migration, structural poverty and systemic racism encompass two correlative research areas which JSRI will analyze vis-à-vis the immigration flows into the South—particularly from Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean—as well as offer research and practical actions for ameliorating adverse social effects on various receiving communities [urban/ rural] and cultural groups [black/Hispanic].
Strangers No Longer: On A Journey Of Hope (November 2002), a joint pastoral letter on migration issued by the bishops of Mexico and the United States, recognizes that migration is both “necessary and beneficial” (no. 1) for both countries and calls upon people of good will to “work toward changes in church and societal structures” (no. 9) which would comprehensively serve the needs of migrants. Moreover, in a 2003 letter outlining five apostolic preferences for the world-wide the Society of Jesus, Very Rev. Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, SJ—the Superior General of the Jesuits— mandated that in addition to directly serving refugees through agencies such as the Jesuit Refugee Service “…it seems necessary to widen this appeal, so that we come to the aid of the numerous migrants, according to their manifest needs on the various continents.”(January 1, 2003: p. 3). For the past 25 years, the Society of Jesus has engaged in a systematic and intentional effort to assist refugees through the international Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS). While JRS provides an inspiring example of effective action on behalf of refugees, up to this point there has been no comparable research and action in the southern United States from a Catholic perspective with regard to migrants and displaced persons.
The research institute provides a collaborative atmosphere through which the resources of Loyola University and the institute staff can be the primary vehicle for delivering applicable research on issues of migration, racism, and poverty.
