Sanctuary legislation is used in many different contexts. What the so-called ‘sanctuary cities’ have in common is that city authorities actively ignore people’s legal status when conducting business with their inhabitants. Thus, while drawing on humanitarian principles, sanctuary practices often have a pragmatic side. For example, the variety of legal and residency statuses of people living together in a city have often resulted in complicated organisational and social networks, the disruption of which by immigration authorities would endanger social peace. This tension has been framed as a contradiction between national requirements and a post-national local reality, a tension that sanctuary practices might be seen as responding to. This chapter draws on these contradictions between the national and the post-national to explore in metropolitan areas discussion of the future role of the local and of statehood is being made and remade in response to concerns around national identity and post-national populations. Sanctuary in these contexts emerges as an urban policy framing that results from such discussions. The chapter thus argues that if sanctuary legislation is a sign of political change in the perception and organisation of migration, it may also signal the changing nature and significance of the nation-state in an interconnected and increasingly urbanised world.

This chapter critically addresses the temporary reception of refugees and asylum seekers in Europe, by focusing on the everyday forms and practices of resistance that migrants put in place, primarily to counter the 'illegalising' policies of EU states. Conceptually, the chapter connects critical citizenship studies with autonomy of migration debates, to discuss the immobility – or the 'temporality of waiting' – of the prolonged moment during which migrants are stuck in the net of EU migration policies. The chapter focuses on a specific form of refugee response initiative – a self-reception system in the form of the City Plaza in Athens (Greece), a disused hotel that has been squatted by migrant activists and refugees to produce a space of accommodation and social support. The chapter argues that through City Plaza, we witness practices of 'autonomous geographies' that constitute forms of self-provided 'alternative' welfare, capable of extending and renegotiating the status of citizenship and enacting diverse forms of solidarity. In addition, they provide a discursive space of political legitimation, while acknowledging alternative and non-state forms of 'citizenship in motion'. The chapter is based on six months’ fieldwork in Athens, living and working at City Plaza as a refugee accommodation and solidarity space.

Traditionally, international law was divided into the law of war and the law of peace, with no intermediate stage between. When hostilities began, usually following a declaration of war, and non-parties to the conflict were held by the belligerents to be subject to the duties of, and they claimed the rights pertaining to, neutrals, war was recognised and the law of war came into operation. As with the situation under customary law, it is irrelevant whether the conflict is in accordance with the obligations of Hague Convention III, the Pact of Paris or the Charter of the United Nations. Even if the conflict does not amount to war in the legal sense of that term, there is nothing in international law, other than human rights conventions, preventing a country imposing restrictions upon the freedom of residents possessing adverse-party nationality.

This chapter first historicises securitisation theory and situates the theory in the wider field of international security. It shows that securitisation theory was innovative in the sense of challenging the state-centricity and over-militarised nature of international security during the Cold War. The chapter then proceeds with a brief discourse analysis of speeches made by George W. Bush and Barack Obama in relation to Islam and the role of Muslims in the war on terror. It argues that Bush and Obama articulated Islam as a ‘peaceful religion’ and that terrorists ‘hijacked its peaceful teachings’. Even Donald Trump sought to reassure the American public that his executive order banning citizens from Muslim-majority countries was ‘not a Muslim ban’. As a result, the chapter demonstrates that this presents a challenge to securitisation theory. The last section engages with the burgeoning post-Copenhagen School literature, which has raised important concerns about securitisation theory, and concludes by addressing the implications for the puzzle of the book.

This chapter explains the epistemological and ontological positions of the book and clarifies the methodology used for this study. The chapter examines the linguistic turn in the social sciences and establishes the relation between reality and language. Influenced by the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein, it argues that language is constitutive of reality and thus matters for how we understand the world. Second, the chapter excavates the role of language in securitisation theory to foreground the central argument about linguistic practice. Lastly, the chapter introduces three key linguistic aspects that play an important part in the book: strategic narratives, indirect speech acts and framing Islam as a non-security issue.

The international law of armed conflict grants rights and imposes duties upon the non-participants, which are known as neutrals and the relevant legal regime as neutrality. Occasionally it is conceded that in certain circumstances a neutral may offer assistance to one of the belligerents on the basis of benevolent neutrality. A neutral has the right to permit belligerent troops to take refuge in its territory, but must intern them and prevent them from taking any further part in the conflict. If the neutral is a party to the Prisoners of War Convention, their treatment, if interned, must at least equal that required for prisoners of war. Subject to any regulations imposed by their government, neutral nationals may continue trading with either or both belligerents, but the articles involved are liable to seizure as prize.

How being embodied shapes people’s experience of the world is an area of growing interest, with physical presentation understood as a resource in the production of identity and power. This chapter explores how the body, clothing and displays of emotion ‘spoke’ within courtrooms, shaping social and legal power relationships. Performances of dress, physical appearance and emotion could all be used to judge manly behaviour and character and so were implicated in the construction of justice. Men whose bodies or clothing suggested poverty undermined claims to a masculine character formed through respectability and a beautiful body. Eccentric men disrupted such norms, offering alternative readings of the male body. Through the press, such performances contributed to debates around Irish identity, civilisation and nationhood.

A non-international conflict has traditionally been one in which the governmental authorities of a state are opposed by groups within that state seeking to overthrow those authorities by force of arms. In accordance with the fundamental principle of customary international law concerning the independence of a sovereign authority, this type of conflict has traditionally been regarded as falling outside the ambit of international law. Apart from Article 3, common to the 1949 Conventions, the first major attempt to introduce international legal control of non-international conflicts by way of a statement of black-letter law is Protocol II, 1977, relating to the protection of victims of non-international conflicts. In non-international armed conflicts, as in those of an international character, civilians are to be protected against the dangers arising from the conflict.