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Paper Short Abstract:

What does it mean to “do” the law from the site of its very undoing? Based on ethnographic research alongside the German "church asylum" movement, this paper explores the theological-political contestations at the heart of contemporary practices to shelter rejected asylum-seekers from deportation.

Paper Abstract:

Since the early Middle Ages, churches have often been considered sacred spaces in which persons fleeing political persecution may seek refuge. Over the past several decades, Protestant and Catholic churches in Germany have consistently rooted themselves in this tradition, offering sanctuary to thousands of rejected asylum-seekers pending deportation. Due to an informal agreement between church leadership and federal immigration authorities, church asylum [Kirchenasyl] in Germany is “tolerated” in cases where churches are willing to assemble dossiers explaining why a negative asylum decision should be reconsidered. In this sense, churches become tasked at once with criticizing and defying contemporary asylum law, at the same time as they are given the opportunity to ensure its most authentic implementation.

Based on ethnographic research alongside the German sanctuary movement, the following paper interrogates what it might mean to “do” the law from the site of its very undoing. Taking seriously “the permanence of the theological-political” (Lefort 1986), the paper seeks to understand how Christian conceptions of the moral law “reoccupy” (Blumenberg 1991) gaps that are continually left vacant by secular determinations of political belonging. Building on work that explores how certain modern religious practices remain authoritative even when they are not legally binding (Agrama 2010; Lemons 2019), the paper outlines how and to what extent Kirchenasyl, a practice that is not legally codified, prompts crises of ethical obligation on the part of the state, actively (un)doing legal categories at the intersection of religion and migration politics.