Transformation Cafe - Finding Sanctuary

The Office of Social Innovation's final Transformation Cafe of the year highlights the research of Sanctuary Scholars at the OSI and beyond. How do universities participate in bordering practices, even when they present themselves as welcoming or inclusive spaces?

This Transformation Cafe explores how we can create university cultures that are hospitable to students with precarious immigration status through conversation with researchers and community leaders working across Canada and the UK. Featuring Daniella Chan and Montserrat Ballesteros from the Finding Sanctuary project, Brantella Williams and Fatima Mohamed from the S4 Collective and the Access, Protection, and Welcome project, and facilitated by Rebecca Murray from the University of Sheffield and the Access, Protection, and Welcome project, this panel will invite collective reflection on how “sanctuary” is imagined, practiced, and constrained within university spaces.

Drawing on emerging research, lived experience, and activism for systemic institutional change, panellists will examine the discourses that shape how students with precarious status are understood and treated on campus, the barriers they face in accessing and moving through higher education, and the limits of institutional responses that focus only on inclusion without structural change. Speakers will explore questions such as: How do discourses of deservingness shape which migrants are welcomed into higher education, under what conditions, and at what cost? And, what can we learn from students’ experiences about the limits of institutional inclusion when the institution itself is embedded in colonial, nationalist, and bordering logics?

This Café invites participants not only to listen, but to think about our collective responsibility in creating more just universities that are welcoming to all.

Location + Time

When: Wednesday, April 29th, 2:00pm -3:30pm

Where: 288 Church Street, (DCC building), room 707/709

Access: ASL interpretation. This is a mask-mandatory event. Please wear a mask when not eating, and we will have surgical masks available. For questions about access, please email eliza.chandler@torontomu.ca