A welcoming city and nowhere to live: private hospitality and the urban politics of reception in Bologna

ABSTRACT

Private hospitality – sometimes referred to as family hosting or homesharing – consists of private citizens hosting migrants for periods ranging from a few weeks to several years. Since 2015, there has been a rapid expansion of active private hospitality initiatives across Europe. Though many programs started as informal housing arrangements coordinated by grassroots organizations, local and state governments are increasingly investing in private hospitality as a reception strategy. This paper focuses on the urban approach to private hospitality in Bologna, Italy, a city with a progressive reputation and a vocal commitment to implementing and innovating programs of migrant reception. I draw from ethnographic fieldwork carried out in 2022 to showcase how Bologna’s urban context and the actions of resident hosts, migrants, and practitioners shape the creation and evolution of private hospitality programs in the city. Though stories of resident-led hospitality can be deployed by municipal administrations as evidence that a city is welcoming, a site of moral urbanism, they also capture the enduring inhospitality of a city where migrants need willing hosts to secure safe and reliable housing.

KEYWORDS:

• Hospitality
• urban solidarity
• migrant housing
• moral urbanism
• Italy

Acknowledgements

I am grateful for the comments and encouragement provided by Drs. Jill Williams, Sallie Marston, and Kate Coddington. This article also benefitted from the keen feedback of session participants at the 2023 meeting of the Association of American Geographers (AAG) and the 2022 “Welcoming of Refugees and Grassroots Solidarity” conference held at the University of Genoa. Special thanks to the editor and reviewers, whose insights greatly contributed to the improvement of the article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The participants of this study did not give written consent for their data to be shared publicly, so due to the sensitive nature of the research supporting data is not available.

Research ethics and consent

All participants in this study provided written informed consent. All participants were over the age of 18. As delineated by the consent form, resident and migrant participants were granted anonymity, whereas practitioners speaking on behalf of their organization agreed to be identified in the study and resulting publications. This study was reviewed and approved by the University of Arizona Institutional Review Board.

Notes

1 Bologna still has a Hub, the Mattei Center, which remains a subject of controversy and protest by migrant organizations in Bologna considering the city's promise of disinvestment in an emergency, short-term reception. Over the years there has also been a re-expansion of CAS availability. In June 2022, in part due to the Ukraine crisis, spots in the CAS metropolitan network amounted to 1141 (to SAI’s 1805).

2 When receiving benefits through an institutional reception program in Italy, migrants cannot earn more than €469.03 per month without incurring penalties and losing eligibility (2022).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the International Dissertation Research Fellowship by the Social Sciences Research Council, by the American Geographical Society Council Fellowship, and by the University of Arizona’s Graduate and Professional Student Council through a Research and Project Grant.