ABSTRACT

This book explores the duality of openness and restriction in approaches to migrants in the Nordic countries. As borders have become less permeable to non-Europeans, it presents research on civil society practices that oppose the existing border regimes and examine the values that they express. The volume offers case studies from across the region that demonstrate opposition to increasingly restricted borders and which seek to offer hospitality to migrant. One topic is whether these practices impact and transform the Nordic Protestant trajectory. The book considers whether such actions are indicative of new sensibilities and values in which traditional categories and binaries are becoming less relevant. It also discusses what these practices of hospitality indicate about the changing relationship between voluntary organizations and the Nordic welfare states in the time of migration. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology, anthropology, and religious studies with interests in migration, civil society resistance and social values.

chapter 1|15 pages

Introduction

Contextualized hospitalities: Migrants and the Nordic beyond the religious/secular binary

part 1|1 pages

Exploring the Nordic context

chapter 2|19 pages

Religious civil society and the national welfare state

Secular reciprocity versus Christian charity

chapter 3|17 pages

Defending the endangered nation

Nordic identitarian Christianism in the age of migration

chapter 4|21 pages

Beacons of tolerance dimmed?

Migration, criminalization, and inhospitality in welfare states

chapter 5|19 pages

Emergency care between state and civil society

The open clinic for irregular migrants

part 2|1 pages

Reconfiguring migrantscapes in religious and ‘secular’ Nordic civil society

chapter 6|16 pages

“We can teach Swedes a lot!”

Experiences of in/hospitality, space making, and the prospects of altered guest–host relations among migrant and non-migrant Christians in the Church of Sweden

chapter 8|17 pages

What about no-bodies?

Embodied belonging, unspecific strangers, and religious hospitality in Norway

chapter 10|14 pages

Between belonging and exclusion

Migrants’ resilience in a Norwegian welfare prison 1

chapter 12|5 pages

Conclusion

Rethinking hospitality in the Nordic region