Promised Land? Immigration, Religiosity, and Space in Southern California

Abstract

This article looks at how immigrants and their supporters appropriate and use religious space and other public spaces for religious and socio-political purposes in Southern California. While the everyday living conditions of many immigrants, particularly the unauthorized Latino immigrants, force unto them an embodied disciplinarity that maintains spatialities of restricted citizenship, the public appropriations of space for and through religious practices allow for them-even if only momentarily-to express an embodied transgression. This practice in public space helps realize spaces of freedom and hope, however ephemerally. Potentially, these rehearsing exercises can help revert internalized disempowering subjectivities and create social empowerment. Negative stereotypes about immigrants held by the larger public can also be challenged through these spatial practices, as the public demonstrations make visible the invisible. We focus on "Posadas Without Borders" and "the New Sanctuary Movement," considering both the role of progressive civic and religious institutions in supporting immigrants and the agency of the immigrants themselves. The theoretical analysis builds on concepts drawn from a conversation between geography and religious and theological studies. We use a triangulated methodological approach that includes observation and participant observation, content-analysis of multimedia, interviews, and intellectual advocacy for the immigrant movement. The cases discussed here show that progressive religious groups and coalitions can be important allies to progressive planners, geographers, and policy makers in advancing social and environmental justice for the disenfranchised. They also show that the theological underpinnings of such groups share a lot in common with planning epistemologies for the just city.

Intersectionality and planning at the margins: LGBTQ youth of color in New York

“…The study particularly expands the ethical call for planners to contribute to progressive struggles for greater rights to the city and socio-spatial justice for minoritized groups (Carpio, Irazábal, and Pulido 2011;Irazábal and Dyrness 2010;Irazábal and Farhat 2008;Kotin, Dyrness, and Irazábal 2011). We expose how FIERCE and their allies have resisted displacement and defended access to certain spaces, amenities, and services with relative success.…”

“…Identities and institutions are shaped and informed by forms of embodiment that produce space (Irazábal and Dyrness 2010;Harrison 2000;Malmström 2011). Performing actions in defiance of a system they consider unjust, FIERCE tour guides engaged spaces as a means through which to visualize the plight of LGBTQ YOC facing injustices in current city policy and practices.…”

“…These exercises also helped question stereotypes on the part of tour participants (Irazábal and Dyrness 2010). These exercises also helped question stereotypes on the part of tour participants (Irazábal and Dyrness 2010).…”

Right to the Suburb? Rethinking Lefebvre and Immigrant Activism

“…Maywood, in addition to other cities, including Berkeley, San Francisco, New Haven, Albuquerque, Seattle, and Durham to name a few, is part of this national movement (ICMA, 2008). The Church of Saint Rose of Lima was at the center of this struggle, part of larger trend in which immigrants adopt religious spaces and transform them into meaningful spiritual, cultural, and political places (Irazábal & Dyrness, 2010; Kotin, Dyrness, & Irazábal, forthcoming). Similar to the church‐based Sanctuary Movement, in which the church serves as a safe haven from persecution, Sanctuary is a symbolic status taken on by cities who do not allocate funds to enforce federal immigration law, but on the contrary make concerted efforts to make access to education, health, public space, police, and other resources safe for unauthorized immigrants.…”

The Ordinary and Extraordinary: Producing Migrant Inclusion and Exclusion in US Sanctuary Movements

“…In contrast, in an interview with alternative news site Truthout, a national grassroots coordinator for immigrant rights at Church World Service traces the NSM's origins to the Swift Raids of 2006,3 and the subsequent activist responses (Bader, 2014). Highlighting a different place and year, Irazábal and Dyrness (2010) identify the NSM's origin as a January 2007 meeting of various faith organizations in Washington DC to listen to testimonies of mixed-status families grappling with the threat of deportation. Bell (2010) suggests that the movement actually began in Chicago in 2006 when Elvira Arellano, an unauthorized Mexican migrant with a US citizen son, sought sanctuary in the Adalberto United Methodist Church after receiving deportation orders.…”