In this dissertation Mancina shows that in San Francisco, during the period analyzed from 1980-2010, the creation and enactment of sanctuary city policy linked municipal practices of serving and politically representing all "residents regardless of immigration status" with the mandates of the California state government and U.S. federal government. This included first and foremost, clarifying how municipalities might relate to the federal deportation regime by defining the conditions when it is appropriate and when it is inappropriate to initiate contact with federal immigration authorities and initiate the deportation proceedings of undocumented San Francisco residents. In so doing, both governmental sanctuary practices and municipal deportation practices became clarified, routinized, codified in policy, institutionalized, and normalized with the expressed purpose of "safeguarding the sanctuary city."

 

This dissertation is based on qualitative and quantitative ethnographic field research, archival research, and extensive public records requests and analysis. Funding for the completion of this dissertation came from the United States National Science Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and the Vanderbilt University College of Arts and Sciences.