Hospitality as lens for migration studies

This paper presentation has three components; first, an enquiry of the concept of extended citizenship in migration studies in the context of the modern welfare model: the model finds itself in what Jürgen Habermas in 1971 termed a ‘crisis of legitimacy’: it is unable to fulfil its promises because there are limits to its financial resources. What is more, the focus on claim-making and extended rights of the migrant produces a tendency for the language and practice of hospitality to ‘turn’ against the guest today, and notably the construction of the figure of guests who not only fail to fulfil their duties (welfare ‘parasites’) but even betray the host. Next, an enquiry of the concept of hospitality as possible lens for migration studies; it implies a twofold analyses with two levels, a macro level, to focus our attention to the modalities of hospitality given by the juridical status of the stranger and its influence on civil inclusion (Sassen 2007; Brenner 2011); and a meso level, to focus instead upon hospitality as an inter-subjective relationship between the host and the guest as a way to relate, as an experience and as an ethics (Derrida 2001). Finally the paper gives a short introduction into an on-going research project on hospitality cultures in early modern and contemporary Copenhagen.