Migration as Morality Politics: The Contentious Politics of Sanctuary in Europe and the United States

The proposed project addresses a research gap concerning the role of values in migration politics. Once a field dominated by bureaucrats and special interests, migration politics has now become a site of intense value-based conflicts. Such conflicts touch upon deeply-held moral principles and generate dynamics of contention that are typical of morality politics. Nevertheless, the moral dimension of migration politics has not been in the focus of either the migration studies or the morality politics literature. In order to fill this gap, the project develops a new analytical approach to the study of migration that is sensitive to the role of values as a source of normative disagreements and as constitutive of political actors’ preferences and motivations. It does so through an empirical study of the contentious politics of sanctuary in Europe and the United States. On the basis of qualitative interviews and primary document analysis, the project investigates three types of sanctuary practices: church asylum, sanctuary cities/firewall policies, and humanitarian rescue operations in the Mediterranean and at the United States-Mexico border. These practices are highly contested, generate contentious political dynamics, implicate religious values and actors, and involve moral controversies and dilemmas. The project uses these three types of sanctuary as empirical case studies that will serve as building blocks for the development of a theory of migration as morality politics. In its investigation of sanctuary practices, the project pays particular attention to the role of religion. It directs its gaze to religious actors from Christian denominations who uphold liberal pro-migrant political positions on the basis of traditional moral values (e.g. life, family). In so doing, the project problematizes simplistic assumptions about the relationship between religion, traditionalism and illiberalism, thus contributing to a deeper understanding of the role of religion in migration and morality politics. The project is innovative in its combination of migration studies and morality politics, in its choice of sanctuary as a case study and in the breath with which it investigates this phenomenon, as well as in its approach to the role of religion. The principle investigator, Dr. Julia Mourão Permoser, is post-doctoral research fellow at the Department of Political Science of the University of Innsbruck. She has several publications in the fields of migration, religion, the politics of values, and European studies. The proposed project will constitute the basis for her Habilitation in political science.