Research talk: Kristin Yarris (Global Studies, Oregon)

12:00 PM - 1:30 PM (Pacific Time)

Research talk: Kristin Yarris (Global Studies, Oregon)

Sanctuary has various and contested meanings and iterations within movements for migration rights in the U.S. Using Oregon as a case study, and drawing on ongoing ethnographic engagement with immigrant rights efforts in the state, in this talk I examine how sanctuary has become contested grounds for expanding and contracting the possibilities of citizenship, belonging, and social care for migrants. Tracing the various forms that “sanctuary” has taken over the past five decades—from agribusiness-supported legislation to limit state surveillance of immigrant workers in the 1980s, to place-based sanctuary movements organized by faith communities in the 1990s, to contemporary efforts to expand state protection for undocumented communities, which led to the passage of Oregon's Sanctuary Promise Act in 2021—I consider sanctuary from a social movement perspective, situating state-level efforts at immigrant protection within a broader national context of exclusionary discourse and policies foreclosing the very possibilities of inclusion and belonging that sanctuary imagines.

Sponsor(s): Center for Study of International Migration