Sanctuary Everywhere: The Fugitive Sacred in the Sonoran Desert

by Barbara Andrea Sostaita

In Sanctuary Everywhere, Barbara Andrea Sostaita reimagines practices of sanctuary along the U.S.-Mexico border in order to explore the possibilities for radical fugitivity in the face of militarized border enforcement. After the 2016 presidential election, churches, universities, cities, and even states began declaring themselves sanctuaries. Sostaita proposes that these calls for expanded sanctuary are insufficient when dealing with the everyday workings of immigration enforcement. Through fieldwork in migrant clinics, shelters, and the Sonoran Desert, Sostaita demonstrates that, as a sacred practice, sanctuary cannot be fixed in any one destination or mandate. She turns to those working to create sanctuary on the move, from a deported nurse offering medical care on the border to incarcerated migrant women denying rules on touch in detention facilities to collectives set up to honor those who died crossing the border. Understanding sanctuary to be a set of fugitive practices that escapes the everyday, Sostaita shows us how, in the wake of extreme violence and loss, migrants create sanctuaries of their own to care for the living and the dead.

224 pages, Hardcover

Published September 27, 2024

Reviews

[Luis Osuna · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Being nowhere, they are everywhere”

That’s exactly it, that type of sentence is what makes this book, to me, the most unique, in-depth, and loving study of migration.

Sostaita writes like someone who is haunted, and as someone who has been out in the deserts for the past 7 years, and as someone who is haunted by the same loving ghosts, I can feel Sostaita vibrating with the same passion and love for the people that I’ve felt this whole time.

How wonderful to read of people I love and admire so much; Alvaro, Dora, Robin, I feel like I’m back in Tucson alongside them at a protest or deep in the desert.
(Also I damn near cried when the Armadillos were mentioned.)

This book to me feels soft and loving, but by no means does Sostaita pull back from pointing fingers and planting herself with or against the views of her interviewees and sources.
My fav was the necessary bits about Jason De Leon’s work. Anyone who has read both could surely immediately feel the differences in language and approach, but this book to me is cemented as a spiritual polar opposite to something like ‘The Land of Open Graves’

This is a must read for anyone doing migrant solidarity work, for us, the haunted.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great theoretical intervention. I did find the chapters a bit disjointed (fugitive, if you will).

[Matea Polojac · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read for class!