Hospitality & Society - 1-2: Migration, (In)Hospitality and Belonging in Uncertain Times, Mar 2025

This article examines the challenges faced by non-citizen residents at airport borders of their country of residency, exploring how differential treatment at the border impacts their sense of belonging. Using a critical hospitality lens and an interpretivist method, the analysis focuses on the concept of home and belonging within the liminal spaces of airport borders. The findings reveal that non-citizen residents, justified under the guise of ‘national security’, encounter normalized micro-aggressions, discrimination and interrogation. Consequently, they experience a range of negative emotions, leaving them in a state of uncertainty between belonging and not belonging. Reflecting the theme of the Special Issue, this study draws attention to hostile airport border procedures for non-citizen residents and contributes to the decolonization of tourism and hospitality scholarship by investigating the experiences of this overlooked category of travellers.

This conceptually focused article advances scholarship on hospitality by developing a novel framework for capturing nationalist inhospitality and growing exclusions that have been widely reported by EU citizens living in post-Brexit Britain. The discussion synthesizes two seminal social theoretical models (i.e. derived from Michael Billig’s Banal Nationalism and Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of crises transforming doxa into discourse, respectively) to create an analytical grid consisting of four quadrants that correspond to different, internally nuanced nationalist constellations. Through a discussion of two discursive ‘snapshots’, of the European football championship in 2021 and of Boris Johnson’s last speech as departing prime minister in September 2022, the analytical focus then moves on to the workings of two hitherto under-researched forms of inhospitality: first, a lesser-known, though historically not new sub-type of reflexively hot nationalism; second, a novel configuration of non-reflexively hot nationalism. These ideological constellations add new nuance to our understanding of the different forms nationalist inhospitality can take.

This article explores how asylum seekers and refugees experience ‘welcome’ in Glasgow, a city recognized for its proactive approach to migration amidst the United Kingdom’s polarized discourse. Through semi-structured interviews, the study examines three key aspects: encounters with institutional support, the role of community spaces in fostering a sense of welcome and the impact of interpersonal interactions on evolving experiences of welcome. The findings reveal that personal histories, daily interactions and the broader sociopolitical context shape perceptions of welcome, highlighting its complex and dynamic nature.

This article investigates the role of Kurdish women’s activism in enabling their belonging in London. The extent to which Kurdish women’s backgrounds shape their activism and their demands is also explored. In the context of migration studies, the analysis of Kurdish women’s activism is important as it links migrants’ ties with the homeland with their political activism in diasporas, while also considering the influence of their gender. Using unstructured interviews and observations, this feminist ethnographic research found that Kurdish women were politically active before migrating and that they continued their activism in London for several reasons. Firstly, activism mitigates their homesickness and strengthens these women’s feelings of individual and collective belonging in Britain. Secondly, Kurdish women consider activism as a tool to express their experiences in their home country. Lastly, Kurdish women feel obligated to be the voice of oppressed Kurds who could not leave their home country.

Aspirations–capabilities, as attributes affecting individuals’ mobility, are mainly studied as determinants of pre-migratory decision-making, with less attention paid to their effects on the post-migratory experience. By comparing Chinese migrant groups from Mainland China and Taiwan who have settled in Hong Kong, this study draws on the mobility dimensions as developed by de Haas and the practice theories of Bourdieu to explore how migrants from similar ethnic origins but with different aspirations–capabilities experience distinct post-migratory cultural socialization and agentic coping mechanisms. The narratives of fifteen migrants reveal that, in face of conflicting social norms, those with high aspirations–capabilities tended to cope through the intrinsic and radical transformation of individuals, while those with lower aspirations–capabilities coped through extrinsic, instrumental transnationalism. By analysing the socialization pathways of the two groups, we explain the factors that determined how they overcame migratory challenges like language barriers and discrimination, in an effort to negotiate their belonging in the host society. Our findings add nuanced understanding to Bourdieu’s thesis that despite similar corporeal (re)production of social practices, innate agentic responses can vary depending on pre-disposed (pre-migratory) aspirations. The study also highlights the role of pre-migratory cultural capital (prior lived understanding of the destination) in shaping aspirations and capabilities, which has been overlooked this far.

This article explores the complex and evolving nature of place attachment in the rural Lincolnshire town of Boston, a new immigration destination. Drawing on 28 semi-structured interviews with residents, it examines the ways in which migrant and non-migrant communities make Boston their home, how they react to change and disruption, navigate (in)hospitable encounters and narrate their belonging in the town post the EU referendum, which saw residents overwhelmingly voting against EU membership. The findings show that in the face of place alteration and turbulence, both migrant and non-migrant residents demonstrate a nuanced and differentiated form of commitment to place and, despite intractable systemic challenges, actively work to bring communities together and reframe negative place narratives. Community leadership emerges as integral to the collective effort of creating spaces of hospitality. For migrant and non-migrant communities, place attachment is a dynamic and fluid process, shaped and constantly reshaped by socio-economic and political factors, media discourses and experiences of hospitality/hostility. It is an embodied and emotional process that involves individual and collective discursive efforts to reframe dominant narratives, material and social ways of connecting as well as pragmatic ways of distancing.

This article focuses on migrant women entrepreneurs’ engagement with local communities through creating hospitable spaces and explores how experiences of hospitality/hostility influence entrepreneurial activities and community engagement. Businesses, particularly in the service sector, often function as hubs of social interaction, providing opportunities for migrant entrepreneurs to engage with host communities in ways otherwise not readily available for non-entrepreneurs. These status-based opportunities for social exchange also come with risks and challenges, particularly in more peripheral areas that have traditionally attracted fewer migrants and are often perceived as less hospitable to newcomers. The study draws on 21 semi-structured interviews with migrant women entrepreneurs, analysing their approaches to community engagement to understand the constraints they encounter and the strategies they deploy to overcome hostility and create hospitable spaces. The findings are fourfold: (1) entrepreneurship can act as a vehicle for community engagement for migrant women seeking to identify and meet local needs; (2) community engagement can strengthen migrant women’s business activities through improved access to networks and other resources; (3) through active community engagement and responding to local needs, migrant women entrepreneurs become (re)makers of social infrastructure and (4) experiences of hospitality/hostility mediate migrant women’s entrepreneurial endeavours and community engagement. Conceptualizing the ways in which migrant women use entrepreneurial activities to engage with local communities deepens the understanding of migrant women’s approaches to overcoming hostility and creating more hospitable places and interactions.