Seeking sanctuary in a border city: sanctuary movement(s) across the Canada–US border

Abstract

The Detroit/Windsor Refugee Coalition (DWRC), now known as Freedom House, sits at the base of the Ambassador Bridge that connects Detroit, Michigan, to Windsor, Ontario. Located in downtown Detroit, the building is visible across the river in Windsor. This contemporary shelter for people seeking asylum in the United States is the institutionalization of local sanctuary efforts that took place in the late 1980s. Connected to the wider, US-based sanctuary movement, the DWRC began as a loose network of advocates who contested US policy in Central America and assisted people to cross the border into Canada by making a claim for refugee status. Members of this coalition strategically used Canadian and US legal frameworks and re-conceptualized the international boundary line that both divides and joins this border city. The emergence of the DWRC in the 1980s and its ongoing, material presencein the contemporary border city help us to think about how solidarity is worked out across international boundary lines: the relationships that are possible, the spaces that are produced, and the implications of such collaboration. This chapter focuses on refugee advocacy across the Detroit (US)–Windsor (Canadian) border in the late 1980s. I examine the possibilities for refuge in a border city, where the international boundary line weighs heavily on the landscape, with a presumption that this spatial relationship matters for how refuge is conceived and worked out.