Abstract
What are sanctuary cities? What are the political stakes? The literature provides inadequate answers. Liberal migration theorists offer few insights into sanctuary city politics. Critical migration scholars primarily address the relationship between sanctuary cities and political activism, a small part of the phenomenon. The historical literature examines continuities between 1970s sanctuary church activism and contemporary sanctuary cities, confusing what is essential to sanctuary churches and what is only sometimes associated with sanctuary cities. Together these approaches obscure more than they reveal. This article suggests a republican account of sanctuary cities. Reconstructing American migration politics from the colonial era onward shows that sanctuary cities have roots in both the colonial republican revolt and the republican principle of freedom as nondomination. That reconstruction reveals much about both sanctuary cities and the federal government’s long-running assault on them. The resulting robust analytical framework clarifies what is at stake in the politics of sanctuary cities: federal sovereignty in migration politics specifically and republican liberty in migration politics generally.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 67-97 |
| Number of pages | 31 |
| Journal | Politics & Society |
| Volume | 48 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Mar 2020 |
Funding
Hoye J. Matthew Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam J. Matthew Hoye, Faculty of Social Sciences, VU University Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1105, Amsterdam, 1081 HV, The Netherlands. Email: [email protected] 12 2019 0032329219892362 © The Author(s) 2019 2019 SAGE Publications This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License ( http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ ) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages ( https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage ). What are sanctuary cities? What are the political stakes? The literature provides inadequate answers. Liberal migration theorists offer few insights into sanctuary city politics. Critical migration scholars primarily address the relationship between sanctuary cities and political activism, a small part of the phenomenon. The historical literature examines continuities between 1970s sanctuary church activism and contemporary sanctuary cities, confusing what is essential to sanctuary churches and what is only sometimes associated with sanctuary cities. Together these approaches obscure more than they reveal. This article suggests a republican account of sanctuary cities. Reconstructing American migration politics from the colonial era onward shows that sanctuary cities have roots in both the colonial republican revolt and the republican principle of freedom as nondomination. That reconstruction reveals much about both sanctuary cities and the federal government’s long-running assault on them. The resulting robust analytical framework clarifies what is at stake in the politics of sanctuary cities: federal sovereignty in migration politics specifically and republican liberty in migration politics generally. sanctuary cities migration ethics republicanism nondomination liberalism radical democracy edited-state corrected-proof typesetter ts1 Thanks to the editors and to everyone in the Migration Law group in the Department of Law at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Declaration of Conflicting Interests The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. Funding The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS).
Keywords
- liberalism
- migration ethics
- nondomination
- radical democracy
- republicanism
- sanctuary cities
