Between militantism and academic research: rethinking hospitality and solidarity in the context of the EU’s political crisis

In the current context of the so-called migration crisis, it is essential to recall that the crisis per se is much more a political crisis than it is a disequilibrium in migration movements. Though Europe has seen an increase in the arrival of migrants, and especially of asylum seekers, the last year has actually been characterized by a drastic reduction of arrivals. The fortress Europe has indeed tightened its grip, by over-controlling and militarizing European borders and the Mediterranean Sea. The growing tendency of European national governments to reach out to far-right and populist movements that have as a main political line the control of immigration, makes it necessary to build citizen movements and to create alternative forms of solidarity and hospitality. This dynamic has already begun, despite the increasing criminalization of solidarity by European and national policies. It involves citizens, militants, activists but also academics from different fields, dealing with migration and other subjects, such as border studies, post-colonial studies, gender studies, cultural studies, etc. All these actors have a crucial role to play in the construction of a new approach to hospitality, through their different status, roles and expertise. Moreover, a lot of citizens involved alongside migrants are part of several of these different spheres at the same time. Valorizing this is important in order to think about hospitality in different social, political, but also spatial levels. This can help to build a holistic approach that allows us to escape from the political construction of migration as a specific phenomenon representing a threat to our societies. This construction also tends to form a vision of migrants as a homogeneous category fundamentally different from national citizens. Considering the diversity of migration projects and individual trajectories, the categorization and essentialization of social and cultural difference is non-sense.