Paper short abstract:

My analysis reflects upon impacts of scale and space on the provision of hospitality in a 'house of hospitality' in Chicago, the ethics and complexities behind impulses towards modes of helping, and the negotiation of a third site between the impulse to help and organisational strictures.

Paper long abstract:

My field site was a 'house of hospitality' serving as a transitional shelter in Chicago, within the context of the Catholic Worker movement in the USA. The house was a residence not only to displaced families, but also volunteers. I analyse how hospitality - a poetics of relationality and management of alterities - is engaged with the (majority) undocumented families and volunteers living in close proximity to one another. Through ethnographic examples, I examine the ethics and complexities behind hospitality. Many families resided in the house because they escaped abusive, violent and/or unhappy homes - which in turn encouraged the affective management of warm sociality from the volunteers. This impacted the management and allocation of resources and engagement with strangers who sought help. This paper investigates how the management of this house affected the provision of help - particularly to people other than the residents, who were not officially the 'recipients' of help within the scale of the house's physical and organisational strictures. I analyse a 'third site' negotiating between the impulse to help and the fulfilment of duties following official regulations that may impede this impulse. While my analysis reflects attendant concerns and anxieties of a particular time and space, I focus on how the scale and space of the 'house of hospitality' affected and impacted discursive and relational structures behind the management of alterities and consequent implications for the way the 'stranger' is responded to.