Refugees in Britain: Practices of Hospitality and Labelling

The monograph charts the British approach to the refugee, particularly during times of crisis. Adopting a multi-disciplinary approach, the book explores practices of hospitality and how they work through a politics of labelling. The monograph, then examines three cases studies, founded on original archival and interview material: British refugee policy at the national level; the externalisation of the British response to the Mediterranean refugee crisis; before concluding with localised practices of hospitality to the crisis. The response to the refugee has seen responsibility externalised beyond Britain and the European Union. British practices of refuge are so constrained that the practices of hospitality are geographically positioned beyond the territory, in order to minimise, but significantly, to uphold practices of hospitality- still present but operating through the politics of hostility- in what Jacques Derrida terms, hostipitality. This monograph examines the complexity of British hostipitality, and its operation with, and through the politics of labelling and externalisation in order to both control and exclude the refugee