Repertoires of sanctuary: building a network of safety at the French–Italian border

ABSTRACT

Sanctuary cities have experienced a strong political and theoretical revival in the last decade. However, the focus on cities and their policies restricts the idea of sanctuary to its urban, legal and – to a certain extent – North American enactments, leaving dispersed and rural forms of sanctuary understudied. In this paper, I examine the sanctuary spaces and practices in the Roya Valley, at the border between Italy and France, and more particularly the journey of its most well-known activist, the farmer Cédric Herrou. Although Herrou’s first actions could be best described as humanitarian and hospitable help towards migrants, they gradually evolved into more structured solidarity actions. These led to a decision by the Constitutional Council that strengthened the French constitutional value of fraternity to better distinguish disinterested support from human smuggling motivated by profit. I argue that these three concepts of fraternity, hospitality and solidarity identify different repertoires of sanctuary that respectively fulfil functions of signalling, protecting and community-building. These different functions, when articulated together, constitute a sanctuary or network of safety. By reconstructing this series of practices and justifications, I aim to clarify the conceptual vocabulary and normative appeal of sanctuary.

KEYWORDS:

• Borderisation
• fraternity
• hospitality
• sanctuary
• solidarity

Acknowledgements

The work was first supported by the Department of Ethics, Law and Politics at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, and further developed in the Leibniz Research Group ‘Transformations of Citizenship’ at the Goethe University Frankfurt. I am deeply grateful to Rainer Bauböck and Julia Mourão Permoser for their invaluable help and for welcoming it in this special issue. I have presented earlier drafts of this paper at the Frankfurt Political Theory Colloquium, in the ECPR Panel “Sanctuary cities and subnational sanctuary policies in Europe,” and in the workshop “Borders, Territory, and Rights” organised by Seyla Benhabib and Ayelet Shachar. I wish to heartily thank the participants for their helpful comments and questions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 See Fekete, Webber, Edmond-Pettitt (2017) and Parrot (2019) for a detailed account of the legal abuses of the French state against migrants. To name a few examples of unfair practices of border enforcement in France, I could mention the refusal and criminalisation of food distribution, the pepper-spraying of drinkable water given to migrants, the systematic destruction of shelters and tents, the expulsion from territory without due process, the violations of minor’s rights, or the illegal lengthening of detention time in border zones. Let’s also recall that the European Court of Human Rights has sanctioned France for the ‘inhumane and degrading living conditions of asylum seekers living on the streets’ in 2020 (N.H. and others v. France, no. 4619/12, July 2, 2020) and that the Council of State [Supreme administrative court] annulled, on July 8, 2020, the expulsion to Italy of a woman and her child who wanted to seek asylum in France (Conseil d’État, no. 440756, July 8, 2020).

2 The very concept of ‘repertoire’ implies interdependent collective action: ‘Repertoires belong to sets of contending actors, not to single actors … Like their theatrical counterparts, repertoires of collective action designate not individual performances, but means of interaction among pairs or larger sets of actors. A company, not an individual, maintains a repertoire’ (Tilly 1993, 265 and 268).

3 See art. L213-3-1 of the Code of Entry and Residence of Foreigners and of the Right to Asylum (CESEDA).

4 Originally the Inter-movement Committee for Evacuees, now the main NGO providing help and legal support to foreigners.

5 See the organisation’s website, available at: https://www.roya-citoyenne.fr/royacitoyenne/

6 For a more general discussion of Herrou’s actions in regard to the law and the criminalisation of solidarity, see Müller (2020) and Vergnano (2020a). For a comparable case in the US context, see Devereaux (2019).

7 This form of resistance can also relate to a higher law, such as international treaties and human right norms or, less literally, moral and religious principles. However, I argue that Herrou merely acts in the name of the law, against what he deems as abuses by the police. I add that the organised messiness and ignorance of the exact terms of the laws and regulations at the border facilitate both ambiguous police practices and this legal and legalistic activism.

8 Decision 2018-717/718 QPC, July 6, 2018, available here: https://www.conseil-constitutionnel.fr/decision/2018/2018717_718QPC.htm.

9 Hence, my mention of ‘brothers or sisters’ is necessary considering the gendered conception of the community that fraternity or brotherhood conveys. See Derrida (2005, viii) mentioning the ‘familial, fraternalist and thus androcentric configuration of politics’ implied by fraternity or friendship between ‘brothers’. Puyol (2019, 32–33) also recalls how Mary Wollstonecraft opposed Rousseau’s sexist political community based on fraternity by advocating friendship between men and women. This further points to the criticism of cosmopolitan hypocrisy raised against fraternity. It is universal in theory and particular in practice. Consider its early politicisation among revolutionary French: national borders certainly did not limit brotherhood, but the true brothers were merely those embracing revolutionary ideals. Fraternity was potentially universal, in the sense that the traditional boundaries between estates were abolished and the borders between countries were insignificant in regard to the emancipatory ideal of freedom for all peoples. On the polarised and identitarian understanding of fraternity, Jennifer Allsopp has shown how fraternité kept being mobilised in opposite ways by the right-wing Nicolas Sarkozy and the left-wing Ségolène Royal: when the former explains that ‘we cannot come together’ without fraternité, ‘the “we” was the communitarian “we” of nationalism, not the liberal “we” of universalism,’ the latter is ‘equating Fraternité with “the will of humanity”’ (Allsopp 2012, 10–11).

10 I distinguish my dispositive conception of fraternity – a disposition to recognise the common humanity and dignity of fellow human beings – from a more redistributive one, as the ‘contractualist fraternity’ suggested by Munoz-Dardé (1999).

11 Here again, there are more extensive definitions of the concept, but I wish to remain as close to the actual practices of my case study as possible. See Boudou (2021), Chamberlain (2020) or Monforte, Maestri, and d’Halluin (2021) for a normative discussion of private hospitality compared to state’s hospitality or to more egalitarian relationships that the host-guest interaction might undermine.

12 What I describe here is a constructivist process. Developing one’s interests, the group’s interests and perceiving overlaps around a common cause takes time. It also requires specific actors (to raise awareness and construct commonality) and specific actions (to give proof to one another of what they share and of the beneficial results of the solidarity ties). In other words, solidaristic relations are not given; they are deliberately sought after. Hence, solidarity requires the construction (or recognition) of shared perspectives and interests that result in a consenting obligation to uphold and protect the interests of others as you would protect your own. Solidarity is, thus, inherently political and involves reciprocity.

13 Hence, the vocabulary of sanctuary also applies to homeless people (Bowpitt et al. 2014), LGBTQI oppressed minorities (Ellison 2019) or abandoned and endangered non-human animals (Abrell 2020).

14 Maurice Blanchot (1969, 134) beautifully wrote about the ancient figure of the supplicant who, by definition, remains the one who ‘asks without certainty and without guarantee, never sure of being able to be re-established in this system of respect which is justice,’ entrenching a radically asymmetrical relationship.