A city of sanctuary: the relational re-imagining of Sheffield’s asylum politics

Abstract

In June 2007, the city of Sheffield officially declared itself to be the UK’s first ‘City of Sanctuary’, a gesture that sought to instil a spirit of ‘welcome and hospitality towards asylum seekers and refugees’. Drawing on a series of interviews and ethnographic work, this paper critically examines this gesture by considering how City of Sanctuary sought to enact a relational account of place through which the responsibilities of Sheffield towards both proximate and distant strangers were highlighted. The paper argues that while the City of Sanctuary movement integrates both relational and territorial political practices, it also actively pursues a relational imaginary through presenting the city as a space of political connections and responsibilities. This is achieved through a twin focus upon the role asylum seekers and refugees play in constituting the city and the role that Sheffield might come to play in national discussions of asylum. Following this discussion, the paper looks to the implications of City of Sanctuary’s work for a relational account of spatial politics, arguing that a dual orientation of spatial responsibilities ‘within’ and ‘beyond’ place may be more easily articulated in reference to some networks and flows than others. The experiences of City of Sanctuary therefore suggest that relational accounts must present a space of negotiation between territorial practices, political networks, spatial responsibilities and geographical imaginations. The development of City of Sanctuary into a national network of towns and cities promoting hospitality indicates the importance of such negotiations for developing a culture of refuge across British cities.

Reproducing Everyday Peace in North India: Process, Politics, and Power

“…Such concerns have been articulated of late through the relational spatialities of connection and responsibility (Massey 2004;Darling 2009), the lived realities of multiculturalism (Swanton 2008), and practices of everyday "subaltern" cosmopolitanism (Gidwani 2006;Jeffrey and Macfarlane 2008). In thinking through the figurative and material realities of coexistence across difference, this article engages more critically with the meaning and construction of peace as it is grounded in place, bodies, and national settings.…”

Moral Urbanism, Asylum, and the Politics of Critique

“…Not unlike discussions of Fairtrade urbanism (Malpass et al, 2007) and the City of Sanctuary movement itself (Darling, 2010), these reiterative public sentiments act to construct, convey, and control what the 'good' or 'hospitable' city might look like (Amin, 2006). These statements embed a moral normativity around hospitality into the very nature of what Sheffield means, and by extension into the image of the 'good citizen' of Sheffield.…”

Possibilities of Urban Belonging

“…Another example is the sanctuary‐city movement . This movement has had a considerable impact in numerous US cities, including Chicago and San Francisco, where municipal administrations and civic institutions have committed to creating an environment of hospitality for migrants and refugees, and where city councils adopted resolutions and/or passed legislation banning the use of municipal resources to enforce federal immigration‐related laws, prohibiting city employees from collecting and disseminating information on a person's status, and/or ensuring the delivery of municipal services independent of a person's or family members' status or citizenship (eg Darling ; Darling and Squire ; Mancina ; McDonald ; Squire and Bagelman ).…”