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Non‐status people face a socio‐legal precariousness that contradicts the promises of an inclusive city. Marking Toronto's tenth anniversary of its “sanctuary city” policy, our research assesses the progress and potential of social planning and municipalist agendas to support irregularised residents. Drawing from interviews with service providers, city officials, and non‐status citizens in Toronto, we propose a decolonial politics of urban citizenship recognition we call “non‐status citizenship”. This concept addresses specific paradoxes related to irregularisation, access, jurisdiction, and regularisation. By framing our discussion around these paradoxes, we highlight the discomfort and transformative potential of non‐status citizenship for immigration regimes in sanctuary cities. We argue that recognising non‐status citizenship goes beyond notions of urban citizenship to claim formal recognition and security, which resolves the four paradoxes theoretically, politically, and practically. We also emphasise the role of cities in expanding service delivery and calling out the failure of planning across levels of government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the late 2010s, pro‐immigrant activists in the politically progressive municipality of Mayville, California (pseudonym) mounted a campaign to enact a radically egalitarian sanctuary city policy ("sanctuary for all") that would have changed the boundaries of urban citizenship. The campaign crafted compelling and resonant mobilization frames, constructed a broad and diverse coalition, won the support of large majorities of the public, and targeted elected officials who were all supportive of the rights of immigrant residents. Such conditions, according to literature on immigration politics and urban citizenship, should have resulted in success, but this was not entirely the case. Elected officials did open the policymaking process in response to pressure from activists, but a far‐reaching policy never emerged. Drawing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, this article develops the concept of the 'bureaucratic field' to explain how the distinctive and relatively autonomous power dynamics of a municipality shapes policy outcomes (despite advantages in the political field). The article concludes that without a robust theory of the bureaucratic field, contemporary theorists of social movements and urban citizenship cannot explain the disparity between highly advantageous conditions in progressive political fields and the paucity of transformative policy outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This quasi-experimental study examined whether "sanctuary city" policies are an effective mechanism for reducing mental health inequalities by immigrant origin status in Latinx populations in California. Ample evidence indicates that people experience mental health problems when restrictive immigration policies are imposed. It remains unclear whether sanctuary city policies can improve population mental health in the groups targeted by restrictive immigration policies: undocumented immigrant Latinxs, documented immigrant Latinxs, and native-born Latinxs. We combined data on California's 482 cities concerning whether and when they implemented a sanctuary policy with health data on approximately 142,000 adults, 6400 adolescents and 13,000 children from the multi-year California Health Interview Survey. After using propensity score matching to identify non-sanctuary cities comparable to sanctuary cities, we estimated respondent-level difference-in-differences models to determine whether sanctuary city policies had beneficial mental health effects on three age groups: adults, adolescents, and children during the period 2007-2018. There was a trend toward improved mental health in sanctuary cities after policy enactment, but the patterns of mental health in the three Latinx immigration sub-groups of each age group did not conform to our hypotheses. Buffering the adverse effects of harsh federal immigration policies may need to involve other approaches, such as expanded local mental health care access. We discuss these results in terms of alternative treatment interference, residents' policy awareness, the policy's capacity to address past health impacts, methodological issues, and potential policy momentum.

What are the most important conceptions of 'sanctuary' in relation to citizenship and community, and how do today's sanctuary cities engage with such lines of thinking? This paper examines the moral visions underlying and animating many of today's sanctuary cities in the United States in order to illustrate how local communities have adopted a combination of liberal, communitarian and cosmopolitan perspectives in social and political philosophy. By tracing the recent history of the sanctuary cities movement and examining current public discourses among community leaders and activists in several leading sanctuary cities, the analysis shows how the idea of 'sanctuary' works across principles of individual freedom and human rights as emblematic within liberalism, notions of solidarity, social trust and local self-determination in communitarianism, and aspirations for shared responsibility and the advancement of human dignity as found in cosmopolitanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Walter Benjamin published his influential essay ‘Critique of Violence’/‘Zur Kritik der Gewalt’ in 1921, and the work has troubled and provoked thinkers across disciplines for over a century now. This Forum gathers a group of scholars in philosophy, political science, international relations and legal studies to reflect on the actuality of Benjamin’s essay for contemporary critical theory. In their separate contributions, sasha skaidra and R. Guy Emerson each elaborate on how Benjamin’s classic illuminates contemporary understandings of the politics of life and (violent) death globally. skaidra takes the Sanctuary City movement in Europe and North America as a focus. Arguing that Sanctuary politics is limited in its capacity to challenge borders in-of-themselves because the movement is caught in a false antinomy between natural and positive law that Benjamin critiques, skaidra’s contribution proposes a critique of borders that emulates Benjamin’s method which isolates violence from the mystification of legal theory. Whereas migrant justice movements threaten the state order by challenging Westphalian notions of time, Sanctuary operates like a purgatory wherein a potential messianic migrant figure could herald the end of state borders. skaidra proposes the idea of utopic purgatory as a means to isolate how Sanctuary Cities contribute to and limit a critique of borders. In the second sole-authored contribution to this section of the forum, Emerson rereads Benjamin in relation to Foucault by thinking biopower through criteria irreducible to official qualifications on life or the efficient management of populations. As a pure means without ends, violence for Benjamin cannot confirm anything external to it, be it the protection of life that comes after its elimination elsewhere or the regulation of life that follows the suppression of alterity. Instead, for Emerson, violent biopower, as pure, manifests a deadly order that immediately strikes life in a manner too abrupt to confirm rule or regulate populations. The result is a criterion for understanding both violence and life in biopower that maintains its distance from official intentions.

This quasi-experimental study examined whether “sanctuary city” policies are an effective mechanism for reducing mental health inequalities by immigrant origin status in Latinx populations in California. Ample evidence indicates that people experience mental health problems when restrictive immigration policies are imposed. It remains unclear whether sanctuary city policies can improve population mental health in the groups targeted by restrictive immigration policies: undocumented immigrant Latinxs, documented immigrant Latinxs, and native-born Latinxs. We combined data on California's 482 cities concerning whether and when they implemented a sanctuary policy with health data on approximately 142,000 adults, 6400 adolescents and 13,000 children from the multi-year California Health Interview Survey. After using propensity score matching to identify non-sanctuary cities comparable to sanctuary cities, we estimated respondent-level difference-in-differences models to determine whether sanctuary city policies had beneficial mental health effects on three age groups: adults, adolescents, and children during the period 2007–2018. There was a trend toward improved mental health in sanctuary cities after policy enactment, but the patterns of mental health in the three Latinx immigration sub-groups of each age group did not conform to our hypotheses. Buffering the adverse effects of harsh federal immigration policies may need to involve other approaches, such as expanded local mental health care access. We discuss these results in terms of alternative treatment interference, residents' policy awareness, the policy's capacity to address past health impacts, methodological issues, and potential policy momentum.

This article reflects on the commitments and outcomes of municipal access without fear policies in Canada over the past decade. The potentials and limitations faced by sanctuary cities are evaluated through an analysis of municipal policies, peer-reviewed scholarship, and grey literature. In particular, I focus on three conceptual framings that are commonly associated with sanctuary city policies––sanctuary-as-defiance, sanctuary-as-protection, and sanctuary-as-inclusion––and ask: to what extent can these be observed in the discourses and actions of Canadian sanctuary cities? I find that while municipal access without fear policies do constitute valuable expressions of solidarity with residents without immigration status, municipalities have faced several challenges in living up to their expectations. I conclude by suggesting that we might look toward grassroots social movements, advocacy organizations, and community networks for examples of these fundamental commitments to defiance, protection, and inclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In February 2017, the city of Montreal adopted a policy entitled Access to Municipal Services Without Fear with a view to allowing non-status migrants to access some municipal programs and services without fear of being arrested and removed from Canada. This article offers a critical analysis of the city of Montreal’s policy. We discuss the main barriers to implementation, namely, the limited jurisdictional power and authority of the city in migration matters and the municipal police’s refusal to comply with the policy. We draw on the conceptual framework of the sanctuary city to argue that the municipality crafted creative solutions to barriers as part of its bid to make the city more inclusive.

This study estimates the association between sanctuary policies and crime in the United States by exploiting an increase in state and local sanctuary policy adoption in 2014. Counties that adopted sanctuary policies in 2014 experienced a decrease of 17.9 violent crimes per 100,000 inhabitants per year (0.02 percentage points) compared to counties that continued to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE), with the relationship driven by decreases in robberies and assaults. This result implies that sanctuary policies avoid $101 million per year in crime costs. Conversely, ICE cooperation increases crime costs in local communities by $3.28 billion per year. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

City diplomacy is a major trend in the soft power development. As cities face daily political issues deriving from globalisation (such as mass tourism, migration, climate change, and commodification of culture), they demand for, rather than contesting with a nationstate, an operational reinterpretation of sovereignty oriented to solve problems. Political economy approach is a useful method to understand the role of global cities where the nation state has many deficiencies. The global city establishes rules to influence international legal development and practice, even without a traditional legal basis (such as sovereignty, monopoly on violence, and legal exclusivity). As these 'superstar cities' grow, other cities are losing opportunities to develop and take advantage of globalisation. The risk of inter-urban inequality feeds populism. Cities will become the middle power in global political organisations in the future, and political economy will shed light on how power and values operate at the urban level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sanctuary policies may attract criminals and lower the opportunity cost of crime, while these policies produce a spiral of trust that supports police and raises informal social control over crime. I estimate the dynamic effects of sanctuary policies on crime rates at city level. This paper finds (1) no evidence that sanctuary policies cause an increase in any crime, (2) some evidence that they may lead to a decrease in property crime, and the effect is strengthened over time after the adoption, (3) the increased trust between residents and police is likely the reason for the negative effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines resettlement patterns in the USA: primary placement patterns where refugees were placed by U.S. dispersion policy, and then internal or secondary migration patterns based on voluntary relocation by resettled refugees. Using data from the U.S. Department of State and from a community-based census, analyses consider labor market conditions and immigration policies (Sanctuary City policy and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement program) in cities of refugee resettlement, in addition to geographic region and immigrant population as local-level characteristics salient to secondary migration patterns in the post-September 11 era of resettlement in the USA, using Bhutanese refugees as a case study. Results indicate that U.S. refugee dispersion policy places Bhutanese refugees in cities with poorer labor market conditions, which conflicts with the policy goals of job placement and self-sufficiency. In terms of internal migration, results suggest that Bhutanese refugees follow the paths of immigrants more broadly into "new refugee destinations," particularly in the midwestern regions, which have fast-growing immigrant populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective/context: Contemporary cities are strategical to process global governance. Both in the Global North and South, there is a growing interest to identify and analyze the city´s capacities to assume that global role. With this context, the objective of this research was to test the analytical strategy of denationalization to study a global process of Mexico City. Methodology: With an interdisciplinary and qualitative approach, and putting on dialogue to global sociology with theories of international relations (foreign policy of cities), this research used the analytical strategy of denationalization to understand how the global get from within nation-states. To deepen this process of denationalization, I used the case study of Mexico City, its foreign policy and its actions under the label of Sanctuary City. Conclusions: According to the analytical approach developed and the findings (the assistance approach and no rights to attend migrants and the non-recognition of multiple belongings of migrants) this research concludes that the micro, as a scale of the global, is useful to understand the contemporary global processes beyond state-centric perspectives. Originality: The original contribution of this research is to place the global as processes that occur within nation-states, and forward in the study of foreign policy not only related to states but also practiced by other actors.

This paper focuses on the policy implemented by the city of Milan to deal with the migrants crossing the city en route to central Europe from 2013, mainly from Syria and the Horn of Africa. To understand the city's response to this wave of migration, a qualitative case study was conducted that included interviews with volunteers, public employees, legal advisers and refugees. Milan's initiative is discussed in the context of the expansion of sanctuary city policies in Europe during the period of the “migration crisis”. In particular, we will see that the sistema profughi was from 2013 to 2017 an alternative to national and international policies on transit migration in terms of law, narrative and implementation, in supporting the right to the transit and challenging European and Italian policies on the matter.

This study examines resettlement patterns in the USA: primary placement patterns where refugees were placed by U.S. dispersion policy, and then internal or secondary migration patterns based on voluntary relocation by resettled refugees. Using data from the U.S. Department of State and from a community-based census, analyses consider labor market conditions and immigration policies (Sanctuary City policy and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement program) in cities of refugee resettlement, in addition to geographic region and immigrant population as local-level characteristics salient to secondary migration patterns in the post-September 11 era of resettlement in the USA. using Bhutanese refugees as a case study. Results indicate that U.S. refugee dispersion policy places Bhutanese refugees in cities with poorer labor market conditions, which conflicts with the policy goals of job placement and self-sufficiency. In terms of internal migration, results suggest that Bhutanese refugees follow the paths of immigrants more broadly into "new refugee destinations," particularly in the midwestern regions, which have fast-growing immigrant populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws on theoretical insights about bordering and citizenship as strategies for socially constructing difference and the scholarship on scalar challenges underlying contemporary bordering to analyze sanctuary cities in the United States and cities of refuge in Spain. We argue that these initiatives challenge and resist restrictive national migration policies from below, at the local level, with attention to their implications at the global scale. Such policies have the potential to create meaningful social change by 1) amplifying and producing political unity across socially constructed differences and 2) "scaling down" migration politics from the national to the local level and, simultaneously, "jumping scale" via reliance on human rights framings. We conclude that sanctuary city and city-of-refuge designations are not merely symbolic; instead, these designations can be conceived of as locally based, global repertoires of action that make positive contributions in pursuit of social justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Debates about migration issues are spread across various levels of contemporary Belgian society, where a process of policy restriction is in place, as well as federal discourse aimed at discouraging arrivals. This climate affects not only newcomers, but also those who have been residing in the country for years without managing to regularize their residence status. Within this global framework, local initiatives have developed to support migrants and their needs, as well as to propose broader political claims. In this article, I will discuss these issues by analyzing the case study of a group of undocumented migrants that occupied uninhabited buildings in Liège—with the help of a network of mobilized citizens and associations that are active in the territory—in order to launch a claims process for regularization. The local government of the city tolerates and supports the initiatives of the group to a certain extent, thus making Liège a "sanctuary city", i.e. both a secure space for migrants and a setting for resistance. Such a socio-political space takes shape within a context of multi-level governance targeting migration issues (reception and integration), which is characterized by gaps in policy implementation and subsidiarity. Within this setting, undocumented migrants exert their agency and claim human and civil rights through a series of concrete mobilization actions. The aim of this article is to show how local action affects the process of migration governance in Belgium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article recounts the story of sanctuary city organizing in Ottawa, Canada to explore the politics and potential of a transformative approach to sanctuary rooted in anti-prison activism and abolitionist feminist thought. More specifically, we have adapted the abolitionist framework of reformist reform and non-reformist reform and applied it to sanctuary city organizing. Analysis of the Ottawa case draws on research with frontline service providers and migrant justice organizers, as well as our own organizing experiences, observations, and adaptive practices as sanctuary city campaigners. The paper also elaborates on the forms of solidarity and citizenship that have emerged or have the potential to emerge in the context of a non-state centric vision of sanctuary that prioritizes grassroots transformative practices over municipal policy and that do not bolster or legitimize the state's capacity to deport, punish, and exclude. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective/context: Contemporary cities are strategical to process global governance. Both in the Global North and South, there is a growing interest to identify and analyze the city's capacities to assume that global role. With this context, the objective of this research was to test the analytical strategy of denationalization to study a global process of Mexico City. Methodology: With an interdisciplinary and qualitative approach, and putting on dialogue to global sociology with theories of international relations (foreign policy of cities), this research used the analytical strategy of denationalization to understand how the global get from within nation-states. To deepen this process of denationalization, I used the case study of Mexico City, its foreign policy and its actions under the label of Sanctuary City. Conclusions: According to the analytical approach developed and the findings (the assistance approach and no rights to attend migrants and the non-recognition of multiple belongings of migrants) this research concludes that the micro, as a scale of the global, is useful to understand the contemporary global processes beyond state-centric perspectives. Originality: The original contribution of this research is to place the global as processes that occur within nation-states, and forward in the study of foreign policy not only related to states but also practiced by other actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

More than two hundred cities in the United States have now declared themselves to be sanctuary cities. This declaration involves a commitment to non-compliance with federal law; the sanctuary city will refuse to use its own juridical power – including, more crucially, its own police powers – to assist the federal government in the deportation of undocumented residents. We will argue that the sanctuary city might be morally defensible, even if deportation is not always wrong, and even if the federal government is legally permitted to demand that states participate in the process of deportation. We defend this conclusion with reference to a simple, but powerful, norm of international law: that of non-refoulement. As we will discuss, this norm articulates the idea that no state may rightly use its coercive power to move a person into a position in which their basic rights are at risk. We take this norm as a morally defensible principle, and ask what could follow from its acceptance. We argue that this norm has implications for a variety of actors – especially when we notice that those who are facing unjust risks of death are, in general, entitled to use defensive violence against their aggressors. This simple fact, we argue, can help offer a novel defense of the sanctuary city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the policy implemented by the city of Milan to deal with the migrants crossing the city en route to central Europe from 2013, mainly from Syria and the Horn of Africa. To understand the city's response to this wave of migration, a qualitative case study was conducted that included interviews with volunteers, public employees, legal advisers and refugees. Milan's initiative is discussed in the context of the expansion of sanctuary city policies in Europe during the period of the "migration crisis". In particular, we will see that the sistema profughi was from 2013 to 2017 an alternative to national and international policies on transit migration in terms of law, narrative and implementation, in supporting the right to the transit and challenging European and Italian policies on the matter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In recent years, migrant justice organizers in Canada have developed campaigns aimed at building, legislating, and enforcing municipal commitments to alleviating and resisting the harms done by federal immigration enforcement, and ensuring migrant access to municipal services. As a result of these efforts, some cities, including Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, and Hamilton, have declared themselves "sanctuary cities," and campaigns centered around this concept have emerged in other localities across the country. In this article, the authors--who are themselves involved in sanctuary city organizing--reflect on the concept, and off er a critical assessment of these organizing efforts. We provide a brief history of these campaigns in Canada, discuss the impact of these policies in cities where they have been adopted, reflect on the types of politics that inform notions of sanctuary, hospitality, solidarity, and resistance, and offer some lessons for moving forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How can we retain the political category of citizenship, a concept instituted firmly at the heart of European politics since the French revolution while shedding its anti-progressive baggage of exclusivity? Cityzenship, we argue, is one such possibility. It is the right to the city, the urban commons, extended to all residents, regardless of origin, identity or legality, based on the principle of ‘rightful presence,’ as expressed in slogans like ‘No One Is Illegal.’ But membership in an urban commons, we believe, is more than non-discriminatory access to public services guaranteed under sanctuary city mandates. The urban commons include public infrastructures as well as public spaces, places of culture and education, cafés, the street and the street corner along with the capacity to make and unmake these spaces. Access to the urban commons is organized not only via rights and laws, but also through what Sara Ahmed calls ‘atmospheric walls,’ which although difficult to grasp are techniques for ‘making spaces available to some more than to others.’ Whiteness, masculinity, and class privilege are good examples of immaterial walls with material effects. With the help of affect theory, we discuss one instance of a cityzenship act – an off-space sculpture biennale held in a public park in Berlin – that breaks through the atmospheric walls of Western urbanism to offer, if only for a moment, an unmarked space for hospitality and solidarity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This quasi-experimental study examined whether "sanctuary city" policies are an effective mechanism for reducing mental health inequalities by immigrant origin status in Latinx populations in California. Ample evidence indicates that people experience mental health problems when restrictive immigration policies are imposed. It remains unclear whether sanctuary city policies can improve population mental health in the groups targeted by restrictive immigration policies: undocumented immigrant Latinxs, documented immigrant Latinxs, and native-born Latinxs. We combined data on California's 482 cities concerning whether and when they implemented a sanctuary policy with health data on approximately 142,000 adults, 6400 adolescents and 13,000 children from the multi-year California Health Interview Survey. After using propensity score matching to identify non-sanctuary cities comparable to sanctuary cities, we estimated respondent-level difference-in-differences models to determine whether sanctuary city policies had beneficial mental health effects on three age groups: adults, adolescents, and children during the period 2007-2018. There was a trend toward improved mental health in sanctuary cities after policy enactment, but the patterns of mental health in the three Latinx immigration sub-groups of each age group did not conform to our hypotheses. Buffering the adverse effects of harsh federal immigration policies may need to involve other approaches, such as expanded local mental health care access. We discuss these results in terms of alternative treatment interference, residents' policy awareness, the policy's capacity to address past health impacts, methodological issues, and potential policy momentum., Competing Interests: None., (© 2022 Published by Elsevier Ltd.)