| Abstract: | While contentious national debates persist about the promise or peril of so‐called “sanctuary cities,” this article draws on an archive of U.S. subfederal policies that focused on local responses to immigration and enforcement from 2001–2014 to argue that sanctuary constitutes a process rather than a binary state of being. Such a conceptualization underscores the broad spectrum of policy endeavors that comprise sanctuary and shifts the focus away from a reductionist question of whether or not a place is a sanctuary to inquiries into how sanctuary functions as a process in both policy creation and application. I focus on sanctuary as a process to demonstrate its socio‐spatial heterogeneity and to highlight how the assertion of local values within sanctuary policies advances internal bordering. Textually analyzing sanctuary policies in this way illustrates how the process of sanctuary can simultaneously resist the bordering efforts of federal immigration enforcement and reborder local practices to cultivate belonging for citizens and noncitizens alike. |
