Authors: Jacopo Anderlini
Published in: Elèuthera (2025)
Through an archaeological investigation of the concept of hospitality, from its Greco-Roman roots to contemporary European policies, this book reveals the hidden grammar that governs inclusion and exclusion in our societies. Hospitality is never neutral: it is always a political act that establishes who can enter and who must stay out, who deserves protection and who does not. In the interweaving of political, economic and moral dimensions, it becomes the device through which distinctions between 'inside' and 'outside', between 'deserving' and 'undeserving' are defined. From the Schengen border regime to hotspots, from narratives on urban hospitality to digital control devices, Anderlini illuminates how the reception of the Other is always conditioned by a logic of sovereignty that, at the very moment it opens, excludes.
I limiti dell’ospitalità presents a critical analysis of contemporary migration governance in Europe through an archaeological examination of the concept of hospitality. The book reveals how hospitality operates as a political device that simultaneously includes and excludes, establishing the boundaries of who belongs and who remains outside European societies.