Cartographies of Hospitality

The terms "migrant crisis" and "refugee crisis" have come to denote a particular contemporary period of European political uncertainty and fragmentation in responses to those fleeing from violence and poverty in the Middle East and Africa towards the imagined safety of Europe. Amidst growing concerns in Europe about the unfavorable socio-economic effects of contemporary migration and forced exile, this comparative qualitative study will examine a less prominent side of global mobility: hospitality. Drawing from discussions of hospitality in continental philosophy, we are working with and from a broad understanding of hospitable practices as entailing the giving of time and space.

Our project is using ethnographic and narrative interviews to document the political, social, cultural and philosophical aspects of hospitality as it affects communities of mobility and exile in different multicultural contexts in Europe. Our focus is on civil society organisations in local communities in Sweden, England and Turkey. By exploring how hospitality is practiced in these different settings and how such practices can shift over time as organisations negotiate changing immigration environments and discourses, we hope to better understand the everyday meanings and unintended consequences of claims to national citizenship as well as processes of differential inclusion and exclusion. Who belongs? When? And on what terms? What are the relationships between the work of local civil society in fostering cultures of equality and social justice and the policies of nation states? How are certain forms of hospitality used as a part of national identity making, so that structural injustices can be subsumed into an interpersonal politics of empathy and kindness?

The aim is to find out what hospitality to migrants, asylum seekers and refugees means in contemporary civil society, including how social structures, public opinion and the law can have an influence on the relationships between conditional and unconditional hospitality. In this sense, we understand hospitality to be an integral part of immigration borders and their policing, a way in which borders can be insinuated into national communities, for example through the creation of the subject position of the ‘good’ guest.

We have also been aware of the appetite for migrant stories and how this can feed into enforced storytelling. Rather than focusing on migrants and exiles, our locality-based research will involve those working for and volunteering in civil society organisations in contrasting urban settings in Sweden (Stockholm/ Malmö), the UK (London/ Oxford) and Turkey (Istanbul). We hope to generate comparative data that will contribute to broader discussions about the role, responsibilities and conduct of civil society. In the process we are also aiming to critically evaluate the ethical and methodological aspects of the research, being attentive to relationships of power throughout the study.

The project is funded by Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation. The project leader, Associate professor Fataneh Farahani is 2015 Wallenberg Academy fellow.

Senast uppdaterad: 24 oktober 2017
Webbredaktör: Henning Brüllhoff
Sidansvarig: Institutionen för etnologi, religionshistoria och genusvetenskap

Tipsa

Fataneh Farahani

Fataneh Farahani is an Associate Professor of Ethnology and Wallenberg Academy Fellow at Stockholm University. Within her research program “Cartographies of hospitality” funded by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg foundation (2016-2021), she examines the political, philosophical and cultural aspects of hospitality (and hostility) in regards to contemporary migration and forced exile.

Yasmin Gunaratnam

Yasmin Gunaratnam is a Reader in Sociology at Goldsmiths (University of London). At Goldsmiths she teaches on race, feminism, disability, cultural representation and research methods.

Nazli Senses

Nazlı Şenses is an assistant professor in the department of Political Science and International Relations at Başkent University (Ankara). At the department she teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on introduction to political science, comparative politics, political ideologies, global migration and European identity.