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MOBILITY & POLITICS
SERIES EDITORS: MARTIN GEIGER
PARVATI RAGHURAM · WILLIAM WALTERS
Zeina Sleiman-Long
Mobility & Politics
Series Editors
Martin Geiger
Carleton University
Ottawa, Canada
Parvati Raghuram
Open University
Milton Keynes, UK
William Walters
Carleton University
Ottawa, Canada
Mobility & Politics
Series Editors: Martin Geiger, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada;
Parvati Raghuram, Open University, Milton Keynes, UK; William
Walters, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada
Global Advisory Board: Michael Collyer, University of Sussex; Susan
B. Coutin, University of California; Raúl Delgado Wise, Universidad
Autónoma de Zacatecas; Nicholas De Genova, King’s College London;
Eleonore Kofman, Middlesex University; Rey Koslowski, University
at Albany; Loren B. Landau, University of the Witwatersrand; Sandro
Mezzadra, Università di Bologna; Alison Mountz, Wilfrid Laurier
University; Brett Neilson, University of Western Sydney; Antoine
Pécoud, Université Paris 13; Ranabir Samaddar, Mahanirban Research
Group Calcutta; Nandita Sharma, University of Hawai’i at Manoa;
Tesfaye Tafesse, Addis Ababa University; Thanh-Dam Truong, Erasmus
University Rotterdam.
Human mobility, whatever its scale, is often controversial. Hence it car-
ries with it the potential for politics. A core feature of mobility politics
is the tension between the desire to maximise the social and economic
benefits of migration and pressures to restrict movement. Transnational
communities, global instability, advances in transportation and commu-
nication, and concepts of ‘smart borders’ and ‘migration management’
are just a few of the phenomena transforming the landscape of migration
today. The tension between openness and restriction raises important
questions about how different types of policy and politics come to life
and influence mobility.
Mobility & Politics invites original, theoretically and empirically informed
studies for academic and policy-oriented debates. Authors examine issues
such as refugees and displacement, migration and citizenship, security
and cross-border movements, (post-)colonialism and mobility, and trans-
national movements and cosmopolitics.
Sanctuary Regions
and the Struggle
for Belonging
Undocumented Immigrants in the United States
Zeina Sleiman-Long
Faculty of Skills
and Foundational Learning
NorQuest College
Edmonton, AB, Canada
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2020
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction
on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and
information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication.
Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied,
with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have
been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published
maps and institutional affiliations.
This Palgrave Pivot imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
To my family, past and present. For those who have struggled through
statelessness and continue to find ways to belong and be recognized
Acknowledgements
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ix
Contents
1 Introduction 1
Migrants and Immigrants—A Note on Naming 5
Methodology 6
Overview 11
References 14
xi
xii CONTENTS
8 Conclusion 125
Public Stories as Forms of Resistance Within Sanctuary
Regions 129
The Future of Sanctuaries 131
References 132
Index 135
Abbreviations
xiii
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
law enforcement, health care providers and city staff are involved in the
sanctuary movement—they do not report undocumented immigrants to
federal officials. There are also cities that offer ‘access without fear pol-
icies’. These policies are more focused on particular issues and do not
turn the city as a whole into a sanctuary. These types of policies grant
access to undocumented immigrants to specific services (library, tran-
sit etc.), with the guarantee that they will not be asked about their sta-
tus; and that federal officials will not be contacted, should their status
be revealed in these particularly instances. Here, it is also important to
distinguish the way in which these sanctuaries provide a relative ‘safety
zone’ for undocumented immigrants and the way in which they facilitate
human rights claims and acquisition.
The notion of sanctuary regions is also developed from an under-
standing of regionalism in the field of International Relations (IR),
which is defined by early scholars of regionalism as ‘the growth of soci-
etal integration within a region and to the, often undirected, processes
of social and economic interaction’ (Hurrell, 1996, p. 39). These sanc-
tuary regions provide an avenue in which refugees, stateless people and
undocumented residents can and do make claims to rights outside of
the avenue of the state. Sanctuary regions are regions that normatively
accept undocumented immigrants by granting them access to basic
services related to education, health, local voting rights and a voice.
Many of these go beyond the acquisition of basic services and incorpo-
rate undocumented immigrants as part of the political community with
access to the rights and privileges of other members of the community.
I will elaborate further in the following chapters on how this concept
can be applied to regions within states, since the concept of regional-
ism within International Relations is aptly reserved for states and interna-
tional order. However, in order to understand the impact and power of
these regions, it is also important to develop a clear understanding of the
history of sanctuary practices and of undocumented immigrants in the
United States.
My focus in this book is twofold: to understand the challenges that
undocumented immigrants face within the United States with regard to
recognition, how those challenges are overcome within sanctuary regions
and how those same challenges redefine our traditional conceptions of
sate-based citizenship, territoriality, and state sovereignty. The large pop-
ulation of undocumented immigrants in the United States (US) exists as
a product of a political system that continues to deny legal residency or
4 Z. SLEIMAN-LONG
Methodology
The research for this book was compiled over a two-year period between
April 2015 and February 2017 and consisted of a mixed methods
approach. This included field work, where I was able to conduct a total
of 15 semi-structured interviews and take part in participant observations
within activist networks in California. My focus was on interviewing peo-
ple who were directly involved in the sanctuary and the immigrant rights
movement in the area. This included politicians, policy makers and com-
munity organizers.
1 There has been a significant amount of discussion within various media outlets debating
the terms that should be used to describe undocumented immigrants. Organizers and lead-
ers among undocumented immigrants have attempted to intentionally lobby various organ-
izations to use the term ‘undocumented’ instead of ‘illegal’. For more details see Stribley
(2017) and Vargas (2012).
1 INTRODUCTION 7
space for the movement. These elements are often left out of literature
on the sanctuary movement.
I began my field work in California, mostly within regions across
Sacramento and San Francisco between June and August 2015. Prior
to going on field work, I reached out to various organizations that
serve undocumented immigrants in San Francisco, Los Angeles and
Sacramento. I was able to schedule several meetings before my arrival.
My first was with a contact that worked with undocumented immigrants
through an umbrella organization. I was then introduced, through my
initial contact, to a number of organizers that then connected me to
other members of the undocumented community.
During the time I spent in the area, I was also able to sit in on three
strategic and stakeholder meetings for activist organizations. I also
collected participant observations at planning meetings that addressed
strategies for lobbying local governments for community health
access. I was also able to join an activist organization on a trip to an
Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) detention centre
in Sacramento, where we visited and spoke with ICE detainees.
Much of my research was conducted in California as it has one of
the largest population of undocumented immigrants in the United
States (Passel & Cohn, 2011). San Francisco is also one of the oldest
cities in the United States with a sanctuary ordinance. Sacramento was
also chosen as it is the capital of California, where there are numerous
statewide policies being developed. Sacramento, in and of itself, is inter-
esting because public opinions with regard to undocumented immi-
grants are divided in the city. The city itself does not have a sanctuary
ordinance, but there is a strong presence of undocumented immigrants
in the area. The city council has also passed a number of laws that I con-
sider to be part of a larger set of ‘sanctuary laws’ that include giving
access to healthcare for undocumented immigrants, education, etc. Yet,
at the same time, certain regions within the greater Sacramento County
tend to be populated by higher proportions of Republican voters. The
county Sheriff of Sacramento has also been known to collaborate with
the Immigration and Customs Enforcements (ICE).2
2 The County Sheriff has criticized sanctuary cities across California, stated that he col-
laborates with ICE as much as possible and invited the Director of ICE, Thomas Homan in
2017 for a town hall meeting. In response to this meeting, the mayor of Sacramento along
with a number of council members organized a rally in protest of the event. See Comstock
(2015) and Di Garzia (2017).
1 INTRODUCTION 9
In order to fill in the gaps and understand how the lives of undoc-
umented immigrants have been directly impacted by the sanctuary
movement, I conducted narrative inquiry of public stories told by
undocumented immigrants across the United States. Narrative inquiry is
also important because it provides an opportunity to understand the lives
of undocumented immigrants in the way that they have chosen to por-
tray themselves, but also how they define their own sense of belonging
to their communities. These stories provide a level of context and detail
that is unique to understanding the experiences and sense of belonging
for undocumented immigrants. Through these stories, I seek to under-
stand the ways in which undocumented immigrants have used their
life stories in order to shape their demands for recognition and human
rights. I am most interested in their understanding of belonging to the
United States or to local communities; how they define being American,
and how they navigate those elements with being undocumented.
I recognize that using narratives and stories in a book that is mainly
focused on addressing issues within international relations and citizen-
ship studies might seem as unusual. However, I draw upon the work of
scholars that have heralded the ‘narrative turn’ in IR (Brigg and Bleiker,
2010; Doty, 2004; Inayatullah, 2010). While, this literature emphasizes
the need to scholars and academics to write in narrative form, my goal in
this book is rather to recognize the voices and narratives of those indi-
viduals who are specifically influenced by the immigration policies in the
United States and that shape the sanctuary movement. In both cases, it
is important to recognize the individual lived experiences of myself, but
more importantly of those that are included in this study.
My intention in collecting these stories was not to develop a general
understanding of undocumented immigrants’ experiences in the United
States—this would require a much larger sample. Rather, the stories
were documented and analyzed because they are the most public nar-
ratives that describe the lives of some immigrants in the United States.
As such, these narratives are shaping the immigrant rights movement
and the perceptions of undocumented immigrants in the country. I use
these narratives to understand how undocumented immigrants repre-
sent and project themselves onto the national stage in demand for equal
access to rights and legal residency. The majority of these are first-person
narratives.
One of the main aims of this book is to emphasize that individ-
uals and communities have the power to shape and shift policies at an
10 Z. SLEIMAN-LONG
international and global level. In this regard, my book is not just about
how cities and regions challenge state policies, but how individuals can
shape those cities and challenge those policies. The immigrant rights
movement within the United States is a movement that has been built
from the ‘bottom up’ and that it is the social activism and struggles of
individuals within the movement that has shaped its success. This is why
these narratives are important within the field, because they provide us
with insights into how individuals shaping the movement view their own
political community and the policies they are seeking to change. ‘It is
impossible to understand human conduct while ignoring its intentions,
and it is impossible to understand human intentions while ignoring the
settings in which they make sense’ (Czarniawska, 2004, p. 15). The nar-
ratives in this case provide insights into motivations behind the rights
claims made by undocumented immigrants, while my field work pro-
vided me with context in which to understand those stories.
The stories I collected were compiled over a three-year period
between August 2015 and August 2019. I selected stories that contained
enough details about the individual’s life and journey in the United
States. Specifically, I looked for details containing their journey to the
United States, whether they had DACA status (and how it affected their
life) and any information about how they feel about their own contri-
butions to the country and their community as well as their sense of
belonging. There are certainly more than 115 available to the public,
but I only include stories that contain enough details presented by immi-
grants themselves. I began by reviewing stories that were the most public
and published by major media outlets, including The Huffington Post, the
New York Times and National Public Radio (NPR) as well as documen-
taries that were produced by undocumented immigrants. I then moved
on to analyze stories that were presented through the Define America
organization that presents various stories and narratives from both immi-
grants and non-immigrants. Stories are also included from iNation
Media, an organization that ‘creates personal and powerful stories about
the immigrant experience in the United States’ (iNation Media, n.d.).
These organizations do not limit the stories published to undocumented
immigrants, but only those narrated in the first person are included. I
also include stories presented in anthologies and books written by
reporters. Several of the stories have also come from the semi-structured
interviews that I conducted while doing my field work in Sacramento
and San Francisco.
1 INTRODUCTION 11
Overview
One of the elements that this research highlights is the way in which
undocumented immigrants exercise their agency in claiming rights in
contexts where their recognition is continually denied by the federal gov-
ernment. In order to represent the profundity of this, I have structured
this book to follow the development of the immigrant rights movement
and the lives of many undocumented residents across the United States.
There are two main parts to this book: the first deals with ruptures and
the challenges they pose for migrant rights, but also for our understand-
ing of state power with regard to border and territorial control. This sec-
tion presents some of the context regarding undocumented immigrants
in the United States as well as much of the theory that has informed this
work. The second part addresses the subsequent attempts at eliminating
or reducing those ruptures and some of the challenges that arise from
those attempted closures. This section essentially addresses the success-
ful efforts of the immigrant rights movement and the condition which
has allowed certain successes to take place. It also addresses some of the
12 Z. SLEIMAN-LONG
References
Barnett, M. (2001). Authority, intervention, and the outer limits of inter-
national relations theory. In T. Callaghy, R. Kassimir, & R. Latham (Eds.),
Intervention and transnationalism in Africa: Global—Local networks of power
(pp. 47–68). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Benhabib, S. (2004). The rights of others: Aliens, residents, and citizens.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Brigg, M., & Bleiker, R. (2010). Autoethnographic international relations:
Exploring the self as a source of knowledge. Review of International Studies,
36(3), 779–789.
Carens, J. (1987). Aliens and citizens: The case for open borders. The Review of
Politics, 49(2), 251–273.
Comstock, N. (2015, July 15). Sacramento sheriff scott jones weighs in on
sanctuary cities. Fox 40. Retrieved from http://fox40.com/2015/07/15/
sacramento-sheriff-scott-jones-weighs-in-on-sanctuary-cities/.
Czarniawska, B. (2004). Narratives in social science research. London: Sage.
Di Garzia, A. (2017, August 15). City council takes time to reconsider proposed
controversial ordinance. ABC News. Retrieved from: https://www.abc10.
com/article/news/local/city-council-takes-time-to-reconsider-proposed-con-
troversial-ordinance/103-464693009.
Doty, R. L. (2004). Maladies of our souls: Identity and voice in the writing of
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17(2), 377–392.
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1 INTRODUCTION 15
and rights, as Arendt (2001) put it, it provides people with the ‘right
to have rights’. Yet, there has been an increasing understanding into
the ways in which citizenship ‘escapes’ state authority (Darling, 2017).
These different expressions and understandings of citizenship provide us
with a framework to think about the ways in which it can be claimed
and ‘given’ at various levels of the political spectrum. What happens
when individuals, without legal citizenship, begin to act like citizens and
demand recognition from political entities? In this chapter, I challenge
some basic assumption around state-based citizenship and reflect upon
the ways in which citizenship can be enacted and claimed.
I want to challenge conceptions around state-based citizenship and
highlight the ways in which individuals enact citizenship by making
claims towards local entities and acquire a sense of belonging—despite
denial from the federal governments. There are several ways in which
undocumented immigrants make these claims. For one, the undocu-
mented immigrant rights movement has been shaped by portraying
undocumented immigrants as ‘ideal citizens’ that contribute to their
community. From this, they have shifted many of their rights claims to
local communities as well as state and municipal governments. In this
chapter, I also develop my theoretical framework and provide a theoreti-
cal background to understanding how non-citizens claim citizenship and
access the rights and privileges that come with this membership and pro-
vide a history of the sanctuary movement in California.
Because I do not primarily deal with citizenship as a legal status, I
provide context into the different ways in which scholars have distin-
guished different forms of citizenship including legal, psychological and
performative (Carens, 1996; Joppke, 2007). These can further broken
into other categories: