Who is the Host? Interrogating Hosting from Refugee-Background Women's Perspectives

Bibliographic Data

ID3642909
AuthorsJosie Gardner (0000-0001-6551-924X, Faculty of Arts, Design & Architecture, The University of New South Wales Sydney, Sydney, Australia), Caroline Lenette (0000-0002-2317-0438, Faculty of Arts, Design & Architecture, The University of New South Wales Sydney, Sydney, Australia, corresponding author), Rooan Al Kalmashi (Faculty of Law, The University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, Australia)
Year2022
Volume43
Issue5
Pages621-638
Publication date2022-09-03
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Intercultural Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0725-6868 • E-ISSN: 1469-9540
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/07256868.2022.2063819
OpenAlexW4229444951
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited24

This paper explores refugee-background women’s concepts of hosts and hosting in resettlement. The refugee studies literature generally uses the term ‘host communities’ to describe a country’s citizens or established communities who interact with and may assist newcomers to build a new life. However, findings from our walking interviews project with a small group of refugee-background women in Sydney, Australia suggest that these women were actively contributing to hosting newly arrived families. They were in fact the hosts rather than the guests. They performed rituals of hosting for newcomers from similar backgrounds more so than the so-called host communities. The act of hosting involved an intra-group process that was integral to the women’s roles in their local communities. Conversely, inter-group relationships with so-called host communities were completely absent. We review how conceptualisations of hosting are used in forced migration studies. We outline how the findings on hosting challenged our own understanding of hosting in a resettlement context. Our discussion of refugee-background women’s agency as hosts for newcomers provides new understandings of an oft-forgotten aspect of women’s lived realities in resettlement, their strengths and resourcefulness, and the gendered nature of these rituals

Political science · Refugee · Sociology · Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography · Gender Studies · Migration, Health and Trauma · Migration, Refugees, and Integration

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access