The Strangers in the Sanctuary: Creative and Resistant Re-signification of Spaces in Barcelona During Public Debate about Immigration Laws in the Early 2000s

This paper explored ways in which female ‘strangers’ are constructed as dangerous disruptors and breakers of boundaries in discourses that oppose immigration to Barcelona, one of the main points of entry to ‘Fortress Europe’. It also looked at ways in which groups of female and female-led immigrants performatively re-signified central spaces in Barcelona to press for sanctuary and citizenship during public debate about immigration law reforms in the early 2000s. With reference to both theory and practice, it claimed that the ‘fortress’ can never be fully impregnable, either physically or at the level of discourse; it will always be subject to boundary breaking and resignification, albeit within a space of unequal power relations.