Scholarly examinations of sanctuary for immigrants tend to focus on destination states in the Global North, where the concept implicates support for the immediate needs of immigrants in a specific location—such as a church, or throughout a city—and in some cases policy advocacy efforts. Few scholars writing in the Global North have explored how this concept translates to the Global South, where most migration and transit occurs, and where a substantial amount of work is happening to support migrants despite the more profound costs to those residing in countries with more limited resources. Alexandra Délano Alonso offers the reader a shift in the epistemology of migration, taking us to locations in the Global South where this work is taking place. In Sanctuary in Countries of Origin: A Transnational Perspectives, she investigates the concept of sanctuary through a case study of her home country of Mexico, determining that the term is an uneasy fit and that the practice of sanctuary is more transformative in the Mexican context.
Délano begins with an examination of historical sanctuary practices in Mexico, noting that, much like in the United States, the main actors have been migrant shelters, churches, and community organizations, but that Mexicans are more likely to use the terms hospitality, shelter, and welcome to describe the support offered to migrants. Given that the Spanish definition of sanctuary tends to focus narrowly on religious spaces, she questions its political power in popular discourse. Délano also asks the key question about sanctuary that Mexicans raised in response to the Central American caravans in 2018, namely, whether sanctuary can exist in a location that is unsafe and under-resourced even for locals. She also explores the complexity and contradiction in the political discourse around these caravans, noting an about-face between governments, from a discourse of hospitality for asylum seekers to the assertion just a few months later that Mexico is not a sanctuary or a “country of open doors” by the administration of Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
The article offers three case studies to explore the discourse and practice of the sanctuary in Mexico. It begins with a description of Mexico City’s efforts, in conjunction with cities such as Chicago and Los Angeles, to respond to returning citizens and resist the anti-immigrant actions of the Trump administration by labeling itself a sanctuary city. Délano explains that the term sanctuary was not politically effective in this setting and that Mexico City eventually relabeled itself, becoming instead a city of hospitality and human mobility.
The article next explores the richest of the three case studies, namely the migrant shelters in Mexico that seek to offer hospitality with dignity. This approach, which includes basic needs such as food and shelter, is distinguishable from sanctuary as practiced in the Global North in that it views “integration as a process of liberation and mutual recognition.” (P. 91.) In other words, dialogue around the structural discrimination, violence, and poverty that affect both locals and migrants is baked into the hospitality process. The goal of this practice is to create political consciousness, enabling migrants to leave behind the status of victim and instead become “protagonists of their own liberation.” (P. 91.) Sanctuary thus becomes encounter and solidarity leading to mutual transformation rather than a practice of citizens bestowing charity upon migrants.
The final case study examines post-deportation sanctuary. Like the first case study, this is an interesting application of the concept to citizens who require assistance to successfully reintegrate into their native country. Délano describes the stigma that attaches to deportees and explains the role that community organizations play in offering support for their immediate as well as medium and long-term needs. She labels these practices “holistic accompaniment”; in addition to food and clothing upon arrival, the groups help to find employment, offer mental and emotional health care, and create community spaces. This is a much longer-term approach than government services that are provided only at arrival. Similar to the migrant shelters described in the prior case study, groups such as Otros Dreams en Acción engage in the praxis of mutual aid, solidarity, and advocacy to dismantle a range of inequalities–economic, social, and political inequality–that harm not only returnees but also their communities. The actors in this final case study were more comfortable deploying the concept of sanctuary, likely because of the time they had spent in the United States.
This thoughtful article looks to the Global South to offer a “more dynamic, self-critical, expansive, and transformative practice of sanctuary.” (P. 95.) In Mexico, we can see practices of hospitality and solidarity that aim to create new forms of community that can alter systems in ways that improve the well-being of migrants and locals alike. Stepping away from the framework of sanctuary in the United States (in which citizens offer aid and non-citizens are victims and recipients of assistance) a turn to the Global South as a site of knowledge production enables a more radical approach that offers the promise of emancipating all of us, citizens and non-citizens alike.
