Refugees Welcome? The politics of hospitality and care in Turkey and Europe
Convenors: Dr. Hilal Alkan (EUME Fellow, Forum Transregionale Studien/ZMO, Berlin) and Dr. H. Pınar Şenoğuz (Philipp Schwartz Fellow, Georg-August-Universität, Göttingen)
This panel aims to critically explore the welcoming responses refugees, fleeing from violent conflicts in their own countries, receive from the members of the host societies upon immigration to Europe, including Turkey. These responses are not solely determined by government policies regarding migration, border control and inclusion; yet they are always in dialogue with them. However, it is still possible to identify grassroots efforts to smoothen the transition of refugees and provide them with vital assistance and aid; as well as tensions in local communities while receiving the refugees.
Drawing on Derrida’s notion of hospitality as an inherently conflictual relation, we argue against an understanding of hospitality as an ethical comparative tool (i.e. more welcoming vs. less welcoming), and rather want to emphasize a conflicted politics of gift and exchange, solidarity and hostility, beyond the binary nature of guest-host relationship. This approach provides tools that allow us to situate the refugees and the locals at the same level, and reveal the workings of power, inequality, indebtedness and patronage as well as care and discipline in every encounter. All these intricate and intimate aspects of welcoming refugees have unforeseeably drastic effects on the questions of inclusion and exclusion, both in the present and in the future of the host countries.
We particularly welcome submissions of papers based on ethnographic research and deal with the questions of hospitality/hostility, care and compassion in the context of the refugee influx with a critical eye. Please send abstracts to hilal.alkan.zeybek@zmo.de and/or hsenogu@uni-goettingen.de or alternatively use the link: https://www.pacsa-web.eu/pasca-meeting-2017-amsterdam/
Deadline is 2 April 2017