The Politics of Hospitality: Welcome and Not So Welcome Middle Easterners in Germany
Around 2011 Israeli (Jewish) immigration to Germany became a recurring subject in public discourse. Reflecting ideological investments, the migration was reported with curiosity. Israeli migrants turned into Jews in German imagination, contradicting their self-definition of being primarily Israelis. As Jews they were welcome, but within limits. If the ‘guests’ expressed too much agency and challenged the status quo of German/Jewish and more so Jewish/Muslim and Israeli/Palestinian relations, things could become complicated. While Palestinian issues are met with increasing support across the social, media, and political spheres, Palestinians are not that welcome as (Muslim) migrants. They are suspected of importing a ‘new antisemitism.’ This paper seeks to unravel the conflicting attitudes towards the interlinked categories Israelis/Jews and Muslims/Palestinians, by focussing on the issue of the politics of hospitality. These reveal how agentic presences of those categorised as others destabilise the assumed ethnic, and ethno-religious boundaries of the German, nominally Christian, majority.
13
71-98
978-90-04-51432-4
Link to article (paywalled), The Politics of Hospitality: Welcome and Not So Welcome Middle Easterners in Germany
The Politics of Hospitality: Welcome and Not So Welcome Middle Easterners in Germany. . 2022: 71-98. https://archive.jpr.org.uk/object-2709