SANCTUARY, SOVEREIGNTY, SACRIFICE: CANADIAN SANCTUARY INCIDENTS, POWER, AND LAW

Vol. 16 No. 6 (June, 2006) pp.423-426

SANCTUARY, SOVEREIGNTY, SACRIFICE: CANADIAN SANCTUARY INCIDENTS, POWER, AND LAW, by Randy K. Lippert. Vancouver, BC Canada: UBC Press, 2005. 240pp. Hardcover. $85.00. ISBN: 0-7748-1249-4. Paperback (2006). $29.95. ISBN: 0-7748-1250-8.

Reviewed by Samuel S. Stanton, Jr., Department of Political Science, Grove City College. Email: sstanton1 [at] charter.net

SANCTUARY, SOVEREIGNTY, SACRIFICE; CANADIAN SANCTUARY INCIDENTS, POWER, AND LAW is an ambitious attempt by Randy K. Lippert to apply the theoretical framework of Foucauldian governmentality to the study of sanctuary incidents in Canada between 1983 and 2003. The work is informative in coverage of sanctuary events and innovative in approaching the study through a post-modern discursive critique of the nature of sovereignty and power. It also highlights intersections between the state, the church, and media.

Lippert’s work is based on interviews with sanctuary providers and supporters of the 36 sanctuary incidents that occurred from 1983 to 2003 in Canada. The typical providers and supporters of sanctuary in Canada were “middle-class, middle-aged, white Canadian citizens” (p.32). Providers for all 36 incidents were churches. Supporters came from a variety of groups including: labor representatives, students, women’s and human rights organizations (p.33).

The recipients of sanctuary in these cases were 261 migrants representing 28 different nationalities (p.36). Lippert’s work does not focus on these individuals or their motivations for attempting to migrate to Canada. We are told that all of these migrants had attempted to obtain status to allow them to remain in Canada through legal processes (p.37). In this work, it often seems that migration and sanctuary provide only a backdrop for discussing issues of governmentality.

Governmentality is based on postmodern political philosophy, primarily the work of Michel Foucault. Governmentality is based on an idea of embedded norms of understanding between participants engaged in a narrative. Outside of those who are part of the discourse, the narrative will have little meaning. Governmentality in this respect comes down to the shared ideas of power between state, community, and individuals. The problem with this type of account of power and governance is that “[l]anguages are not employed haphazardly . . . each must form its own rules and petition the addressee to accept them” (Lyotard 1984, at 42). This is to say that the very nature of the language used in the discourse is constantly evolving and has no rooted meanings that can be accepted as absolute truth, and that each discussion of governance requires each party to the narrative to create rules and petition the other participants to accept the rules as part of the new narrative of governance.

More precisely, as we are told by Lippert, governmentality based on [*424] Foucault’s writing has been refined greatly, but continues to rely on three concepts: programs, rationality, and technologies of government (p.4). Programs refer to ways of imagining government, organization and administering of social conduct. At the ultimate end of program is the creation of docile bodies, “bodies that may be subjected, used, transformed and improved” (Foucault 1977, at 136). Rationalities are the changing discourses which allow us to conceptualize and define the norms of behavior in a society, as exemplified in Foucault’s (1977) explanation of how discipline and punishment changed over time around the world as people informed governments of acceptable forms of discipline and punishment. Technologies of government refer to the material and intellectual means of governance (p.4).

Lippert’s discussion of sanctuary seeks to show that new ways of managing migrants emerged in Canada utilizing localized networks in place of national governance (the creation of a new program). These new programs were based on new rationalities (moral reasons for protecting migrants). The new programs and rationalities led to new technologies of governance (changes in the structures and rules dealing with migration issues).

More precisely, in the discussion of new programs and rationalities Lippert refers to how advanced liberalism affected refugee determination. Liberalism led Canada to sign the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (1951) and the Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees (1967), which in turn led to a new domain for governmentality—determining “who is a refugee” (p.44). This liberalism led to creation of new programs for dealing with refugees. By the late 1980s Canada was experiencing more than 10,000 refugee claims per year, creating a crisis for government resources (p.46). Because of advanced liberalism, however, it was not possible to stem the flow through mass deportation or not allowing refugees and migrants into the country. Stopping the flow would have led to spectacle, and spectacle is something that no government in an advanced liberal society desires.

Lippert tackles sovereignty, a difficult subject, in Chapter 4. Foucault’s (1977) conception of sovereignty is the availability of coercion and the ability to make and suspend laws. Perhaps the best lines of the entire book are found in this discussion. “Coercion and salvation are two sides of the same coin. It is not the outcome of a decision but the capacity to make the decision and to have it obeyed that renders the decision sovereign” (p.69). Lippert is not content merely to explain sovereignty but engages in an examination of spheres of sovereignty.

Lippert seeks to show that sovereignty rests in communities and churches as surely as it exists for the national and provincial governments. His discussion of sovereignty residing in multiple realms brought to mind the consideration of sovereignty in Calvin’s treatise ON CIVIL GOVERNMENT (1536) and Calhoun’s A DISQUISITION ON GOVERNMENT (1849). The [*425] main point of these works, particularly Calhoun’s, is that sovereignty resides in the people, and the people decide at what level it will be applied. Certainly the churches offering sanctuary exercised sovereignty—they did not have to grant sanctuary, and they could remove it at any time. And most assuredly, the Canadian government exercised sovereignty in having the right to make the ultimate ruling on the status of the refugees involved in the sanctuary incident.

What is confusing in Lippert’s discussion is that he then seeks to add another level of sovereignty at the ministerial level of government, based on the ability of a minister to issue a ruling on the refugee’s status (p.75). How a minister is different from government itself is not easily grasped. In fact, it is arguably the case that the minister, as a representative of the government, is the government in action.

The discussion of sovereignty does not forgo the issue of territory. Territorial control is one of the foremost points of sovereignty. Lippert’s argument is that the space of the churches used in the sanctuary incidents is effectively the same as territory occupied by a people, governed by a state within internationally recognized borders.

Another interesting discussion in this work is Lippert’s discussion of pastoral power. However, it becomes painfully obvious that the author has little understanding of clergy and their role, assigning attributes to clergy without truly realizing that there is considerable variation in their roles in the different Christian denominations.

While Lippert’s work fills an interesting niche – discussion of sanctuary movements outside of U.S. scholarship on the sanctuary movement of the early to late 1980s – his treatment of religion in the sanctuary issue is often lacking depth, starting with the claim on the book jacket that the phenomenon is often not primarily religious in orientation. If religion does not have a central role, why is it that every single sanctuary incident occurred in a church? If religion does not occupy the primary place, why have a chapter on pastoral power, and why discuss sovereignty and territorial issues in terms of the role of churches as sovereign and occupying territory?

There are also some interesting questions left unaddressed in Lippert’s work, including a missed opportunity to examine why the largest number of sanctuary incidents occurred in Montreal, as opposed to Toronto (the largest city) or Vancouver (a large port of entry for migrants). In addition, the real role of religion in the sanctuary process, which is a question of the greater importance of brotherly love versus acceptance of secular authority, is not fully addressed. Finally, one puzzling omission occurs in the first chapter where Lippert indicates that he will consider four theoretical governmentality issues, but he only lists three before moving on to discuss other critiques.

I would recommend Lippert to scholars who want a postmodern discussion of sanctuary. It would have some currency in a graduate course but would not be quality reading material for an [*426] undergraduate course considering the question of migration laws and sanctuary. If you are simply looking for a book that details migration, asylum, and sanctuary issues and laws in Canada, look elsewhere.

REFERENCES:

Foucault, Michel. 1977. DISCIPLINE AND PUNISH: THE BIRTH OF THE PRISON. New York: Vintage

Lyotard, Jean-Francois. 1984. THE POSTMODERN CONDITION: A REPORT ON KNOWLEDGE. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

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