Remapping Sanctuary: Political Theology and Ontario Border Enforcement

Abstract

State borders are often viewed as something faraway that demarcate a country’s frontier; however, whenever a teacher, nurse, social worker, or frontline city worker requires proof of citizenship to access services, they undertake the work of border guards. In Canada and abroad, Sanctuary City policies range from local governments issuing ID cards, schools clandestinely enrolling undocumented students, and domestic abuse shelters refusing entry to the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) conducting raids on their property. This activism and policymaking exemplify a case where municipal policy propels social change and analysis of how urban spatial politics interact with state borders that impede migrants’ access to outreach services. I apply an International Political Sociological (IPS) methodological framework to critically deconstruct academic and public narratives that emphasize the urban and religious character of Sanctuary Cities. Using IPS, I combine political theory that calls for abolishing state borders, critical cartography, and a political theology to deconstruct the foundational texts and mapping methods of critical -border, -citizenship, and -migration studies that research Sanctuary Cities. I argue that these subfields reproduce a narrative that cities, economic globalization, and religious movements are in-of-themselves antithetical to state borders. I challenge this narrative by conceptualizing a seeing like a zone approach to visualize the border in terms of deportation routes, inter-police networks, and how the Immigration Refugee Board (IRB) enacts self-deportations. Using Geographic Information System (GIS), I create six maps depicting CBSA, IRB, and local policing immigration infrastructure used in Ontario for the deportation, imprisonment, trials, and investigation of migrants. These maps and my seeing like a zone approach demonstrate that current Social Scientific literature overlook how Sanctuary Cities are ultimately compatible with state borders.