Events

Transnational Sanctuary a two-day event that gathered activists, scholars, faith leaders, and grassroots organizations to examine sanctuary as a transnational practice, an ideal, a theory, an historical proposition, a call to civil disobedience, and a vision of social justice for the present.

What does sanctuary mean and how is it practiced in the United States and beyond? How are practices of migrant care, advocacy, and solidarity framed in relation to the concept of sanctuary? Aside from sanctuary, what other vocabularies, strategies and practices are being used? How can both the idea and the practice of sanctuary complement the work of activists responding to the violence of expulsion, the dangers faced in transit, and the brutality of detention and deportation? How do shelters, churches, activists, and organizations cooperate across borders? Is a transnational politics of sanctuary possible? What can other movements learn from sanctuary movements, both historical and contemporary? As activists on the ground grapple with these questions, Transnational Sanctuary is an invitation to students, activists, scholars, and the broader public to reflect, imagine, and strategize.

Organized by the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics at NYU and the Zolberg Institute Working Group on Expanding Sanctuary at The New School.