Ambivalences of Hospitality

This essay addresses the ambivalences, limits, and possibilities of an ethics of hospitality. It argues for three claims. First, there is a significant disjuncture between an ethics of hospitality and a politics of hospitality expressed as cosmopolitan right. Second, a cosmopolitan right of universal hospitality does not, and cannot, fully capture our obligations to refugees. Third, there is a significant role of an ethics of hospitality in a form that has been modulated by the discourse of moral equality and human dignity in helping to sustain a just politics of refuge.