City of Sanctuary: A State of Deferral

Over the last decade, sanctuary has been evoked as an alternative to the problems associated with an exclusionary statist asylum regime. In Canada, the United States and Europe the ‘cities of sanctuary’ movement, which is articulated through various political vocabularies, has emerged. This movement conceives of sanctuary not simply as a church-based space where asylum seekers may be secured, but offers a host of welcoming practices within and beyond cities. This thesis specifically explores the UK-based City of Sanctuary movement, with a focus on the case of Glasgow, which has widely been read as exemplifying hospitality towards and empowerment of asylum seekers. Whilst a statist discourse of fear, a ‘politics of unease,’ positions migrants as a threat to be policed the City of Sanctuary aims to stimulate a softer approach. Yet this thesis illustrates how the City of Sanctuary is also mobilizing a deeply troubling ‘politics of ease.’ Based on a genealogical-ethnographic investigation, which traces an array of ancient and modem practices, I show how the politics of ease renders intractable the serious problem of protracted waiting that many asylum seekers face. In so doing, I demonstrate how the seemingly hospitable City of Sanctuary in fact contributes to a hostile asylum regime by indefinitely deferring and even extending a temporality of waiting. Although the City of Sanctuary may serve to smooth over and ease away this serious problem, this thesis also explores a myriad of minor practices that I indicate as challenging this waiting state

Female Genital Mutilation: A Religio-Cultural Sensitive Issue Determining Maternal Health Care Choices among Somali Women in Dadaab Refugee Camp, Kenya

The paper addresses Kenya’s development challenges in maternal health care with a specific focus on the impact of traditional birth attendants (TBAs) and female genital mutilation (FGM) among the refugees. It purposes to achieve four objectives: to discuss the persistence of FGM among Somali women in Ifo Refugee Camp, to establish the hospital process of providing maternal health care to mothers who have gone through FGM; find out the level of preparedness of the midwives to handle mothers with religio- cultural concerns such as prayer, non-involvement of male nurses and how the practice of FGM contributes to the preference of TBA by mothers. The study assumes that midwives’ training may not have effectively addressed FGM, a social-cultural sensitive issue affecting childbirth and care. Secondly, the specific support of midwives in refugee camps contexts remains limited. A qualitative research approach was used in the study, involving Snowballing sampling method, in-depth interviews, and focus group discussions (FGDs). These methods brought out pertinent issues that make TBAs the preferential option for some mothers in spite of the presence of level 4 category hospitals in the refugee camps. In case of birth complications, the mother’s choice for TBA delays the family’s decision to take her to the hospital and for health care workers to save mother and child. The shortage of midwives and the presence of male midwives in hospitals make some Somali mothers seek assistance from TBAs. There is a need to contextualize midwifery training by enhancing the curriculum with evidence-based /mother-centered skills

Female Genital Mutilation: A Religio-Cultural Sensitive Issue Determining Maternal Health Care Choices among Somali Women in Dadaab Refugee Camp, Kenya

The paper addresses Kenya’s development challenges in maternal health care with a specific focus on the impact of traditional birth attendants (TBAs) and female genital mutilation (FGM) among the refugees. It purposes to achieve four objectives: to discuss the persistence of FGM among Somali women in Ifo Refugee Camp, to establish the hospital process of providing maternal health care to mothers who have gone through FGM; find out the level of preparedness of the midwives to handle mothers with religio- cultural concerns such as prayer, non-involvement of male nurses and how the practice of FGM contributes to the preference of TBA by mothers. The study assumes that midwives’ training may not have effectively addressed FGM, a social-cultural sensitive issue affecting childbirth and care. Secondly, the specific support of midwives in refugee camps contexts remains limited. A qualitative research approach was used in the study, involving Snowballing sampling method, in-depth interviews, and focus group discussions (FGDs). These methods brought out pertinent issues that make TBAs the preferential option for some mothers in spite of the presence of level 4 category hospitals in the refugee camps. In case of birth complications, the mother’s choice for TBA delays the family’s decision to take her to the hospital and for health care workers to save mother and child. The shortage of midwives and the presence of male midwives in hospitals make some Somali mothers seek assistance from TBAs. There is a need to contextualize midwifery training by enhancing the curriculum with evidence-based /mother-centered skills

Geographies of welcome : Engagements with ‘ordinary’ hospitality

We explore the topic of welcome through a geographical lens, setting out the relationships between geographical perspectives and current approaches to welcome and hospitality. We argue that geographers are well positioned to develop engagements with the ‘prosaics’ of welcome that have recently been advocated by scholars in hospitality studies. To make this case, we identify a series of fruitful directions, offering a critical exploration of ‘ordinary’ welcomes via recent geographical insights into feminist geographies of intimacy, family and home, other-than-human relations and postcolonialism. The five articles that constitute this Special Issue build on this editorial to develop critical engagements that explore the geographies of welcome, with particular attention to migration and refugees.publishedVersionNon peer reviewe

(En)gendering the political: Citizenship from marginal spaces

This introduction sets out the central concerns of this special issue, the relationship between marginality and the political. In doing so it makes the argument that the process of marginalisation, the sites and experiences of ‘marginality’ provide a different lens through which to understand citizenship. Viewing the political as the struggle over belonging it considers how recent studies of citizenship have understood political agency. It argues that marginality can help us understand multiple scales, struggles and solidarities both within and beyond citizenship. Whilst there is a radical potential in much of the existing literature in citizenship studies it is also important to consider political subjectivities and acts which are not subsumed by right claims. Exploring marginality in this way means understanding how subjects are disenfranchised by regimes of citizenship and at the same how time this also (en)genders new political possibilities which are not always orientated towards 'inclusion'. The introduction then sets out how each article contributes to this project

Zines beyond a means: crafting new research process - commentary to Valli

In this commentary I engage with Chiara Valli's creative zine-making in Bushwick, NYC. In keeping with the spirit of zines, this piece offers a series of (not always connected!) reactions, questions, feelings which address the key question raised by Chiara: how can research become more inclusive? Chiara provides a wonderful reflection in her commentary and I conclude by engaging on the questions of consent that she got me thinking about.

Taking not waiting : space, temporality and politics in the city of sanctuary movement

About the book: Migration is an inescapable issue in the public debates and political agendas of Western countries, with refugees and migrants increasingly viewed through the lens of security. This book analyses recent shifts in governing global mobility from the perspective of the politics of citizenship, utilising an interdisciplinary approach that employs politics, sociology, anthropology, and history. Featuring an international group of leading and emerging researchers working on the intersection of migrant politics and citizenship studies, this book investigates how restrictions on mobility are not only generating new forms of inequality and social exclusion, but also new forms of political activism and citizenship identities. The chapters present and discuss the perspectives, experiences, knowledge and voices of migrants and migrant rights activists in order to better understand the specific strategies, tactics, and knowledge that politicized non-citizen migrant groups produce in their encounters with border controls and security technologies. The book focuses the debate of migration, security, and mobility rights onto grassroots politics and social movements, making an important intervention into the fields of migration studies and critical citizenship studies

Decolonizing urban political ecologies:the production of nature in settler colonial cities

This article contributes to the decolonization of urban political ecology (UPE) by centering the ongoing processes of colonization and its resistances that produce urban natures in settler colonial cities. Placing the UPE literature in conversation with scholarship on settler colonialism and Indigenous resurgence, we demonstrate how the ecology of the settler colonial city is marked by the imposition of a colonial socionatural order on existing Indigenous socionatural systems. Examining the case of Lekwungen territory, commonly known as Victoria, British Columbia, we consider how parks, property lines, and settler agriculture are inscribed on a dynamic food system maintained by the Lekwungen over millennia. The erasure of the Lekwungen socioecological system, however, has never been complete. Efforts of the Lekwungen and their allies to continue managing these lands as part of an Indigenous food system have resulted in conflict with volunteer conservationists and parks officials who assert their own jurisdictional authority over the space. Drawing on interviews and participant observation research, we argue that the seemingly quotidian and everyday acts of tending to urban greenspace by these groups are actually of central importance to struggles over the reproduction of UPEs in the settler colonial city