Content Warning: This section of the guide refers to xenophobia, murder, enslavement, other violence, and challenges faced by immigrants.

Xenophobia is the dislike of and/or prejudice against people from other countries, including immigrants. Sanctuary imagines for the US a dystopian future in which xenophobia has become even more pronounced. In a discussion at the close of the novel, Sher argues that this novel is not actually dystopian; instead, “it is just a few steps into ‘What if…?’” (308). Many dystopian novels imagine the future in order to critique the present. Dystopian futures often aim to show what could happen if society continues down a dangerous path upon which it is already traveling. Sanctuary critiques not only the human cost of xenophobia as it exists in the imagined version of the 2032 US, but also as it exists in the present-day US. The novel alludes to present-day political phenomena to illustrate how the problems in fictional 2032 are rooted in issues that already existed when the novel was published in 2020.

In the novel, the xenophobic measures against immigrants are widespread and increase consistently as the narrative continues. The US has taken new measures to combat what the president calls an “infestation” of immigrants.