What is it about?
While the so-called European migration crisis of 2015 has been echoed with increasingly hostile EU border policies and anti-migrant rhetoric, it has also prompted many citizens' solidarity initiatives toward migrants across the continent. In this context, hosting migrants at home emerged as a new puzzling and exciting phenomenon. This article inquires how people in Belgium who provide shelter to migrants who are considered 'illegal' experience these hospitality relationships. While hospitality is intrinsically marked by unequal power dynamics (i.e. the hosts set the house rules), the article discusses hosts' strategies to establish more reciprocal interaction illustrating theory interview excerpts.
Why is it important?
Hospitality is a useful theoretical lens and a metaphor to think about migrant native interactions in our societies. This article deliberates how we can better administer hospitality in the private space.