(In)Security and Safety

This chapter explores some of the complexities around economies of compassion and the politics of security in local spaces. On one hand, the emergence of migrant shelters demonstrates the ways local actors challenge the state and advocate for migrant rights through the creation of spaces of refuge. Yet at the same time, humanitarian aid shelters become points of contestation in local communities where migrants are feared as racialized and gendered others. The dynamics between priests, shelter workers, and local residents put into relief the ways moral imaginaries of charity, inclusion and justice are shaped by everyday economic and social realities of safety and security.