Challenging political membership from below. Sanctuary cities and the politics of urban citizenship

Sanctuary has often been referred to as un “umbrella concept” covering a wide range of different practices and actors involved (Bosniak 2018; Bauder 2017). Accordingly, political theorists have tried to make sense of these practices from the angle of quite different theoretical approaches. Some have interpreted sanctuary policies in the context of humanitarian-based shelter, others have qualified sanctuary practices as a form of civil disobedience, resistance or opposition against national migration policies and still others have classified sanctuary practices as an updated version of claims for territorial justice. Somewhat different from the former three approaches is urban citizenship as invoked both by sanctuary initiatives and a growing body of literature in the social sciences as well as in political theory (Gebhardt 2016; Vrasti/Dayal 2016; Bauböck 2007). The former approaches have in common, that they mainly locate sanctuary cities within the larger frame of national politics, but only the latter, urban citizenship, is able to capture the urban dimension of sanctuary policies. Against this backdrop, this paper argues that the concept of urban citizenship is a particularly promising starting point for theorising sanctuary policies as it redirects our focus to the reconfiguration of the city as a political space and distinct polity advanced by sanctuary cities and initiatives. While this has already been emphasized before (e.g. Boudou 2020), insufficient scholarly attention has been devoted to a more systematic conceptualization of urban citizenship itself. Which ideas of membership, political subjectivity, community building and social justice are expressed by sanctuary policies? How do these ideas challenge our mostly nationally embedded concepts of citizenship? And what, if anything, is urban about urban citizenship? Bringing normative theories of citizenship in conversation with empirical evidence from sanctuary cities, this paper aims at exploring the urban dimension of citizenship as encapsulated in sanctuary policies. For this purpose, I draw on the well-established distinction between communitarian belonging-based, republican participation-based and liberal rights-based models of the modern statist idea of citizenship (Bellamy/Castiglione/Shaw 2006). By analysing empirical studies of sanctuary practices, I contrast these models with claims for urban citizenship as brought about in sanctuary policies. I discuss alternative ideas of membership, belonging, and participation raised by sanctuary initiatives, such as lived citizenship, urban commoning, or differentiated inclusion, which are tied to the city space. In doing so, the paper aims at offering a more coherent and systematic account of urban citizenship, and provides the basis for shifting the debate on sanctuary policies to a more nuanced discussion on how sanctuary policies may alter our understanding of political membership.