Moral visions of sanctuary across the great divides in contemporary political philosophy

Abstract

ABSTRACT What are the most important conceptions of ‘sanctuary’ in relation to citizenship and community, and how do today’s sanctuary cities engage with such lines of thinking? This paper examines the moral visions underlying and animating many of today's sanctuary cities in the United States in order to illustrate how local communities have adopted a combination of liberal, communitarian and cosmopolitan perspectives in social and political philosophy. By tracing the recent history of the sanctuary cities movement and examining current public discourses among community leaders and activists in several leading sanctuary cities, the analysis shows how the idea of ‘sanctuary’ works across principles of individual freedom and human rights as emblematic within liberalism, notions of solidarity, social trust and local self-determination in communitarianism, and aspirations for shared responsibility and the advancement of human dignity as found in cosmopolitanism.