We think of hospitality as a generous, inclusive act. But within every act of hospitality there are concealed acts of exclusion, every guest list excludes those not on it, every open door has a bouncer. Rachael Newberry applies Derrida’s theory on the hostility of hospitality to the modern political issue of refugees, examining the UK’s Homes for Ukraine scheme, widely praised as an extraordinary act of generosity, but built on vetting, time limits, and an unspoken assumption that Ukrainians are the “right” kind of refugee. True unconditional hospitality may be impossible, but it reminds us that every system of welcome excludes someone, and without it as a standard, all welcome becomes indistinguishable from administration.

Liberal democracies hypocritically commit to compassion toward refugees while at the same time constructing ever more elaborate systems of surveillance, categorization, and exclusion. The UK has, within the last five years, introduced a multitude of systems to deter people from seeking refuge from war, economic instability and unstable climatic environments.  Thus, as Jacques Derrida argues, hospitality, in the sense of welcome of the other, is structurally dependent upon the hostility it claims to oppose.

According to Derrida, all philosophical thought asserts that “there is no culture or social bond without a principle of hospitality.” However, this principle comes with certain conditions. Derrida’s neologism “hostipitality” asserts that hospitality has a “troubled and troubling origin […] a word which allows itself to be parasitized by its opposite, “hostility,” the undesirable guest which it harbors as the self-contradiction in its own body.”

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The Homes for Ukraine scheme brings Derrida's paradox out of the realm of philosophy and into real lived experience.

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Hospitality becomes conditional the moment we ask the stranger to identify themselves. A passport check may appear administratively neutral, but ethically it transforms welcome into interrogation. The question “what is your name?” is not simply a means of introduction, but a way of cataloguing and labelling those we deem strangers. “What is your name?” carries with it all sorts of additional enquiries—where are you from, why are you here, what right do you have to be here, when are you going back?

Derrida presents us with a difficult challenge, asking if it is ever possible to welcome the other unconditionally. This is an unnerving question, offering an impossible challenge to anyone who believes we owe a duty of care to those seeking refuge. Can a nation, a community, an individual extend hospitality to those in need without any expectation of reward or reciprocity? The conditions we set around welcome come with a set of expectations we may consider to be reasonable. We would not expect a guest to stay for longer than they were invited, for example. But would we, for instance, give up our bed for them? Allow them to help themselves to food from our kitchen?