Over the past two decades, the Sanctuary City movement has resulted in hundreds of jurisdictions declaring themselves safe spaces for undocumented migrants and people without status. Although they often draw on historical precedent, public sanctuary efforts amongst settler societies are markedly different from how refuge was conceptualized in the past.

To explore these broad shifts, Sanctuary in Pieces looks at the history of protection and hospitality in Montreal/Mooniyaang/Tiohtià:ke over two hundred years. Laura Madokoro traces the movements and experiences of fugitives from slavery, wanted criminals, internationally renowned anarchists, and war resisters before turning to instances of public sanctuary practices since the 1970s. As people sought and forged refuge, they navigated a web of social connections, political agendas, and economic realities, testing the notion of the city and whom it was for. Even as those in search of sanctuary imagined, and often enacted, possible futures in the city, sanctuary was far from easy: it lay in an underground marked by refusal and denial, selective compassion and solidarity, and sometimes outright animosity. This contested and tumultuous history offers a profound challenge to the symbolism and substance of contemporary sanctuary city efforts.

Conceptually innovative, Sanctuary in Pieces speaks to activist and policy considerations in the present, the making and unmaking of community, and how historical practice can accommodate silence in studies of intimate experiences of mobility and, on occasion, refuge.

Laura Madokoro is a historian who lives and works on the traditional territory of the Algonquin Anishnaabeg.

Laura Madokoro's profile page

“Sanctuary in Pieces demands that readers rethink our understanding not only of Montreal’s past as a place of refuge, but of the historian’s craft itself.” Steven High, author of Deindustrializing Montreal: Entangled Histories of Race, Residence, and Class

“Madokoro examines the history of Montreal/Mooniyaang/Tiohtià:ke as more than just a sanctuary for displaced persons, but also as a space for both the creation and contestation of refuge and belonging.” Benjamin Gonzalez O’Brien, author of Sanctuary Cities: The Politics of Refuge