The Ordinary and Extraordinary

Producing Migrant Inclusion and Exclusion in US Sanctuary Movements

Bibliographic Data

ID12967669
AuthorsSerin D Houston (Mount Holyoke College), Charlotte C Morse (Mount Holyoke College), Charlotte Morse
Year2017
Volume11
Issue1
Pages27-47
Publication date2017-02-08
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueStudies in Social Justice (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1911-4788 • E-ISSN: 1911-4788
PublisherBrock University Library (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.26522/ssj.v11i1.1081
OpenAlexW2593736735
LanguageEN
Citations received14
References cited12

This article analyzes the Sanctuary Movement for Central Americans and the New Sanctuary Movement, two United States faith-based social movements, to think through the ways in which these pro-immigrant efforts paradoxically render migrants figuratively mute and often excluded from conceptualizations of the nation and its inhabitants even as they advocate for legal inclusion. We examine this tension of inclusion and exclusion through the frequent representation of migrants’ histories and Christianity as extraordinary in the Sanctuary Movement for Central Americans, and migrants’ lives as ordinary in the New Sanctuary Movement. We identify two key processes by which this framing of migrants as extraordinary or ordinary limits the enactment of full social, political, and economic inclusion: (a) public support is principally granted to certain stories, religions, identities, and experiences; and (b) migrants are consistently positioned, and often celebrated, by sanctuary activists as “others.” The discourses of migrants as extraordinary or ordinary effectively generate broad involvement of faith communities in sanctuary work. Yet, as we argue, this framing comes with the cost of limiting activist support only to particular groups of migrants, flattening the performances of migrant identities, and positioning migrants as perpetually exterior to the US. Reliance on discourses of the extraordinary and ordinary, therefore, can truncate opportunities for making legible a range of migration experiences and extending belonging to all migrants, outcomes that arise in contrast to the purported inclusionary goals of the faith-based sanctuary social movements

Epistemology · Faith · Framing (construction · Immigration · Inclusion (mineral · Inclusion–exclusion principle · Limiting · Political science · Politics · Social movement · Sociology · Gender Studies · History · Law · Religion and Society Interactions · Religion, Society, and Development · Religious Tourism and Spaces

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