The “Emergency North Africa” in the province of Bologna: visions and tensions of hospitality in operators’ discourses

We present an analysis of the visions of hospitality of the operators involved in Emergency North Africa (ENA), a welcoming project enacted in response to a higher than usual afflux of refugees in Italy in 2011, which exceeded the capacity of ordinary refugee housing structures. We do so thanks to three focus groups involving twelve operators who have worked on ENA in the Bologna area. We show the presence of a number of tensions existing between definitions of hospitality proposed by the different professions involved, between the rapidity required by the emergency organization and the ordinary pace of other bureaucratic processes, and between the visions of hospitality in terms of either aiming to integrate refugees within the territory or simply providing initial help prior to potential secondary migrations. We conclude by analysing the notions of hospitality expressed in terms of competing governmentalities.