Power and Agency within Faith-Based Sanctuary Networks

This paper investigates sanctuary campaigns in Europe whereby migrants have been granted shelter within a religious building (church, monastery, temple synagogue) or have themselves occupied such a building with the aim of avoiding deportation. The paper is based on research conducted within the framework of the “Migration as Morality Politics” project. Within the framework of the project, the authors have, first, compiled an original database of all mediatized cases of faith-based sanctuary in Europe in the last three decades, which was done using the worldwide newspaper e-archive Factiva. Second, the authors developed a set of indicators for power and agency within sanctuary campaigns, with specific indicators that refer to the claims, actions, networks and identity of both sanctuary-givers and sanctuary-takers. In addition, the authors have also compiled information about the outcome of each sanctuary campaign, that is, whether the campaign was successful in securing the right-to-stay for the individual migrants involved and whether it has achieved broader goals in terms of policy change. Third, the authors have compiled this information into an index, the Index of Power and Agency within Sanctuary Campaigns (INPAS). This index allows us to compare the degree of power and agency held and exercised by sanctuary givers and sanctuary takers in each of the cases of faith-based sanctuary within our database, and to relate this to the outcomes of the sanctuary campaign. The outcome is an incredibly rich dataset that can be used to analyze the impact of different constellations of power and agency within sanctuary campaigns on their ability to achieve their (solidarity) goals.