Paper short abstract:

Applying a decolonial approach, i will to briefly reflect over following aspects: a. “White hospitality” and the ‘necessity’ of governmental hostility b. Intimate aspects of hospitality c. Gendered relations of care and hospitality and construction of (un)deserving refugee

Paper long abstract:

Until recently, studies of hospitality have been less prominent within the broader context of studies of global mobilities. Yet, there can be no discussion of hospitality without recognition of the movement of subjects across borders, and a discussion of mobility without attention to practices of reception, hospitality and hostility cannot capture the socio-political impacts of human migration in host countries.

In order to fully understand the privileges embodied in governmental (in)hospitable policies and isolated hosting practices, we should connect past and current histories. Disregarding the colonial genealogy of migration has resulted in an ongoing loss of historical memory that not only ignores the causes of the forced displacement of people but also overlooks the responsibility of the Global North as causing the contemporary situation of ‘crisis’. In locating current forced migration in continuing colonial genealogies, a decolonising approach challenges the willful amnesia that blocks comprehensive understanding of the enduring, intersecting global dilemmas of inequalities and (im)mobilities (Bhambra).

A decolonising approach to migration studies offers insight into how refugees’ (im)mobilities and the (in)hospitable practices of the hosts are intimately intertwined with genealogies of global colonial relations. Applying a decolonial approach, in this theoretical presentation, I aim to briefly reflect over following aspects:

a. “White hospitality” (Kelly) and the ‘necessity’ of governmental hostility

b. Intimate aspects of hospitality and emergence of hostipitality (Derrida) more than the antithesis or absence of hospitality

c. Gendered relations of care and hospitality and construction of (un)deserving refugee