Extended version of the Lecture text for the COST Action CA 16211 Conference “Migration, Rights and Democracy: Conceptual Reappraisals” held in June 2020 in Vercelli/ Italy. This paper examines the "welcome culture" in terms of its over-pathetic implication of "politics of ethics". The paper aims to reveal the "ethical" approach to the politics as just one sublime object of arbitrariness of the late-modern middle-class individual to appease its never ending desperate search of meaning, among others.

Migration is racialized, especially when documentations made it more difficult for some to move. Asians were selectively discriminated against through passports. It is also difficult on the poor who may not afford travel documents. In similar manner, early Christianity formed by distinguishing itself from other religions through ethnic and racial markers. These markers are a natural part of every person which automatically make religion as well as ethnicity and race, an essential part of humanity. The second part of the article examines the practice of hospitality within Christianity. Hospitality is an important teaching in Scripture which emphasizes the welcoming of all people and especially the poor. The practice of a Christian hospitality will make better the situation of racism and poverty in the migration process.

Presented at The Salvation Army's Trial-Territorial Theological Forum's annual conference, 'Thought Matters', in Wellington, New Zealand, this paper aims to contribute to the conversation about “emigrating from the familiar to make genuine space for the stranger.” Building on previously published work, the paper explores the idea of building peace in a divided world through the lens of shalom. The aim is to demonstrate how hospitality can give shape to peacemaking and, at the same time, to show that concepts of shalom/eirene wholeness and reconciliation, supremely through Christ, can give greater depth to our practice of hospitality.

This article provides a historical perspective to understand better whether hospitality persists as a measure of society across contexts. Focusing on Homer and later Tragedians, it charts ancient literature’s deep interest in the tensions of balancing obligations to provide hospitality and asylum, and the responsibilities of well-being owed to host-citizens by their leaders. Such discourse appears central at key transformative moments, such as the Greek polis democracy of the fifth century BCE, hospitality becoming the marker between civic society and the international community, confronting the space between civil and human rights. At its center was the question of: Who is the host? The article goes on to question whether the seventeenth-century advent of the nation state was such a moment, and whether in the twenty-first century we observe a shift towards states’ treatment of their own subjects as primary in measuring society, with hospitality becoming the exception to be explained.

Today Europe faces epochal changes. The economic crisis, the refugees' crisis, the ethical and political crisis, the spiritual crisis, the educational crisis and various other types of crises draw our attention towards the fact that structural changes are taking place. From among all these, the refugees' crisis is almost like a turnaround, as it reveals not only the greatness of the European spirit, but also its limitations, not only Europe's lights but also its darker sides. Indeed, when confronted with today's refugees and immigrants, the Europeans display different reactions, anti-unionist tendencies and make contradictory political decisions, some marked by the anguish of the other or by xenophobia, but having in mind the same humanist and Christian values: the rights of man, freedom, tolerance, democracy, solidarity, the common good etc. Lest our political reactions towards strangers should betray the values of the Christian humanist spirit and so as to treat the immigrants and refugees as human beings not as mathematical figures, I intend to revisit – from a philosophical and anthropological perspective – the capacity of the European countries to improve the culture of hospitality and to make, if necessary, the different cultural shifts, from the culture of suspicion to the culture of tolerance, then to the culture of dialogue and, finally, to the culture of hospitality. So, bearing in mind the context of today's European political crisis, I will attempt to show that the European civilisation needs not only tolerance, not only social dialogue, but also hospitality. These three types of distinct attitudes towards the European people and strangers do not exclude each other, but intentionally complete each other. Finally, I plead for solidarity as form of educated hospitality which can guarantee a more human life and a united Europe for the good of all peoples, hosts and guests, residents or immigrants. Due to the present political and economic crisis which affects all countries of Europe, I ask myself: how much is the European Union still united today? There are many anti-unionist tendencies within this European Union, but how can we counterbalance or manage them? Undoubtedly, unlike the European Union of the Founding Fathers, today's European Union is larger, including 27 states, and yet less united. The difficulties caused by the recent economic crisis and by the actual refugees' crisis have cast light on various forms of selfishness beyond which it can be clearly seen that the desire for unity has already vanished. The United Kingdom

The present note of research explores the roots and political uses of hospitality within the passing of time. Although today´s conception of hospitality is given to the friendly reception of strangers or tourists, which is based on a profit-oriented paradigm, no less true is that hospitality rests on an ancient cultural background inherited to Europeaness. At the same time, Europe launched to colonize the world, for example since the conquest of Americas, a restricted view of hospitality was politically manipulated to undermine the autonomy of nonwestern cultures. Paradoxically, Europe imposed the sense of nation-state and mobilities as ideological instrument of control where the alterity plays a marginal role. This reminds the reason why hostility and hospitality share the same etymological background.

This paper addresses the question of the risks of hospitality through an examination of two twentieth century French philosophers, Vladimir Jankélévitch and Emmanuel Levinas. With Jankélévitch the limits of forgiveness, both practically and morally, are examined, and thus the limits of hospitality. Levinas offers another approach, still seeing the problematic nature of forgiveness, but insisting on the rights of the stranger who has no other protection, whilst also insisting on the fundamental place of justice in any debate over forgiveness and hospitality. The paper ends by drawing on these two authors to reflect on attitudes to migrants in the Czech Republic today and asks what the approaches described can provide.

In 1993, René Schérer published his book, Zeus hospitalier (Hospitable Zeus). Four years later, in 1997, Jacques Derrida publishes his book Of Hospitality in collaboration with Anne Dufourmantelle. In these two books, along with a series of other texts, the two philosophers engage with the concept of hospitality in order to develop a critique of specific socio-political contexts related to the increasing hostility of European governments against immigrants. This article attempts a comparative examination of their views by highlighting the points of convergence and divergence between the two philosophers, whilst engaging with critical issues stemming from their work with regards to ways of thinking about hospitality today.