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Paper short abstract:

The contribution discusses the need to reframe prevailing understandings of the Mediterranean region and migrant hospitality across it. It argues that assuming a reciprocal gaze on both terms helps to do so. Based on ethnographic works, this hypothesis is discussed in Palermo (IT).

Paper long abstract:

The contribution discusses the need to reframe the Mediterranean region and migrant hospitality reciprocally. On the one hand, there is a growing need to affirm the centrality of the Mediterranean region against long standing visions of it as a periphery of bordering continents (Cassano, 1997). On the other hand, the region is the space of recent migration and hospitality experiences that deploy through complex and circular trajectories across it (Babel, 2018). However, both discussions are still in the making: the Mediterranean region is yet often defined in relation to Northern contexts. Migration processes and hospitality still deploy through rigid institutionalized categories (e.g. departure, transit and destination cities) that deny their plural nature.

We argue that intertwining a gaze on the Mediterranean through hospitality and a gaze on hospitality through a Mediterranean perspective has a productive value, able to “liberate” both terms. The geography of migration pathways and spaces triggers a shift in the understanding of the Mediterranean, and it affirms its centrality as- the core of plural experiences of hospitality. In return, a Mediterranean gaze (Cassano, 1997) on hospitality reveals the characteristics of a “local and adaptive” (Briata, 2014) model that is complementary - and only partially comparable to Northern ones.

Drawing from two pieces of research in urban studies, the contribution emplaces such hypothesis in the city of Palermo, in Southern Italy. Here, grounded on ethnographical material, the work unpacks the politics, policy, spaces and practices of hospitality in an urban Mediterranean crossroad.