"From sanctuary to welcoming cities": negotiating the social inclusion of undocumented migrants in Liège, Belgium

Abstract: Cities have become important sites of sanctuary for migrants with a precarious legal status. While many national governments in Europe have adopted restrictive immigration policies, urban governments have undertaken measures to safeguard undocumented residents’ rights. Existing scholarship on sanctuary cities has mostly focused on how cities’ stance against federal immigration policies can be interpreted as urban citizenship. What is largely missing in these debates, however, is a better insight into the role that local civil society actors play in pushing for sanctuary and negotiating the terms of social in- and exclusion. In this article, we rely on a qualitative study of the 2017 Sanctuary City campaign in Liège, Belgium, to argue that power relations between (and among) civil society actors and city officials help to explain why the meaning and inclusiveness of ‘sanctuary’ shifted over time. Initially, radical activists were able to politicize the issue by demanding the social

Object Details

• Location: Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Frankfurt am Main
• Extent: Online-Ressource
• Language: Englisch
• Notes: Veröffentlichungsversion ; begutachtet (peer reviewed) ; In: Social Inclusion ; 7 (2019) 4 ; 90-99

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (where): Mannheim
• (who): SSOAR - Social Science Open Access Repository
• (when): 2019
• Creator: Lambert, Sébastien ; Swerts, Thomas

Further information

• DOI: 10.17645/si.v7i4.2326
• URN: urn:nbn:de:101:1-2021011414362095842598
• Rights: Open Access; Open Access; Der Zugriff auf das Objekt ist unbeschränkt möglich.
• Last update: 15.08.2025, 7:26 AM CEST