ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we examine how religious organisations engage ideas of ‘hospitality’ in responding to the needs of irregular migrants in European cities, as well as in contesting the increasingly inhospitable practices of states. Hospitality as a frame for practices of reception and integration of migrant Others has become, in many ways, a byword for tolerance and, just like liberal conceptions of tolerance, a powerful tool of governance. We will argue that by drawing attention to some of the ways in which hospitality to migrants is discursively framed and practised in place, we can also better understand the complex ways in which notions of ‘tolerance’ and ‘intolerance’ are invoked by a range of actors involved in migrant reception and assistance. While our focus lies specifically with the Italian context, many of the dynamics we highlight are also identifiable in other EU states: both in the growing role of religious NGOs in providing assistance, but also in emergent tensions between religious and state actors as the provision of care and refuge to irregular migrants becomes, in some instances, criminalised. We provide a brief ethnography of the provision of care to homeless migrants in and around Rome’s central train station Termini by two religious organisations, considering how religious actors use the frame of ‘hospitality’ to contest and work against the increasingly violent policies of exclusion of the Italian state.
