Being ‘at home’ in the nation: Hospitality and sovereignty in talk about immigration

Abstract

The discourse of hospitality is widely used as a way of making sense of the relationships between ‘natives’ and ‘newcomers’ established by immigration. While at first glance this seems a generous and benign system of meaning to apply to relations of immigration, the reality is more complex than this initial view suggests. Relations of hospitality are power relations in which the sovereignty of the host and their possession of the national ‘homeland’ are asserted over new arrivals. These relationships are complicated further in the case of settler societies, such as New Zealand, where the role of host has been usurped by the settler community. Drawing on the analysis of interview data with young white New Zealanders, in this article I highlight the power relations of hospitality and draw attention to both the value and limitations of this discourse in making sense of relations of immigration in the longer term.