Unstable Relocations: Meeting the Other in Kurdolato

Abstract

The increasing number of immigrants who reach Europe's southern shores can represent both a threat and an opportunity for contemporary Europeans. While the principle of toleration might appear both desirable and expedient for dealing with this social phenomenon, it can be an inadequate modality in encounters with "the Other." Using the experience of a group of clandestine Kurdish immigrants in Badolato, Calabria as an ethnographic example, I argue that the paradigm of hospitality articulates a vast array of possibilities for rethinking inter-ethnic relations in theoretical and political terms.