Laura Madokoro

Laura Madokoro, Sanctuary in Pieces: Two Centuries of Flight, Fugitivity, and Resistance in a North American City. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2024.

Rather than accepting sanctuary as a self-evident good, this book urges us to unpack its historical emergence, the inconsistencies in its application, and the often-empty postures it entails. Multi-layered and reflexive, Sanctuary in Pieces is centered on 19^th and 20^th century Montreal but it reaches far beyond in scope and implication. Through a compelling blend of approaches, Madokoro examines how sanctuary has been imagined, enacted, and denied—by governments, communities, and those seeking refuge. The result is a poetic, probing, and radically original work that challenges the reader at every turn. The city’s failure to serve as a true sanctuary offers a sobering critique of liberal ideals and national mythologies.

Madokoro’s study examines the experiences of a range of people: fugitives from slavery, wanted criminals, anarchists, war resisters, and other political refugees. The study emphasizes the distinctive qualities of their experience as well as what they shared. It is at once attentive to the experience of the individual and solidly grounded in the legal and political frameworks that defined migration and asylum. It is equally attentive to the symbolic and emotional resonances of sanctuary, interrogating how it has been represented, misunderstood, and weaponized. Her critical engagement with refugee studies, exile, and belonging is both theoretically rich and ethically grounded. The book’s innovative structure—combining documentary research with oral histories and reflective “field notes”—offers an extraordinary insight into the historian’s craft, making visible the uncertainties, emotional labor, and intellectual evolution that shaped the work.

For its originality, rigorous analysis, elegant prose, significance of contribution and timeliness the committee has selected this book for the Clio Quebec prize. Sanctuary in Pieces is a landmark contribution to the histories of migration, human rights, Canadian nationhood, and Quebec’s metropolis. It deconstructs sanctuary not to discard it, but to imagine it anew. At a time of deep global uncertainty and refugee precarity, this is a history of vital contemporary relevance.