ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the ambiguous meal in order to explore embodied belonging as a comment on contemporary citizenship studies. It explores the ambivalence of belonging by analyzing empirical material from shared meals with irregular migrants in Norway. As Trygve Wyller states, ‘When strangers are kept at a distance it is possible to maintain an image of the self as hospitable and friendly’, which pinpoints the question of stranger proximity in relation to hospitality. A stranger is created in the eyes of the observer, the observer is located in a specific space, and both the stranger and the observer move between spaces. The introductory field note describes a first meeting with guests at a hospitable church offering free meals to ‘those who need it the most’ during the autumn/winter of 2017. How the stranger body is treated in hospitable places, such as the church, challenges those ongoing discussions in contemporary citizenship studies that deal with how subjects become political.
