ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to reimagine immigrant integration based on the virtue of hospitality. It begins with a reflection on nativism and ethnocultural nationalism through the prism of the killing of 22 persons by a white nationalist at the Cielo Vista Walmart in El Paso, Texas, on August 3, 2019. It then pivots to a standard definition of integration as a multigenerational process in which immigrant and host communities mutually negotiate boundaries and equally contribute to building a culture that embraces differences as a blessing and a gift. It distinguishes integration from the related concept of assimilation and from the instrumental virtue of tolerance. It also addresses the challenge of cultural encapsulation, which can impede integration. The chapter then sketches a Christian vision of hospitality, drawing from Hebrew scripture, Jesus’s teachings, and the early Christian community. It offers a rich analysis of the story of Joseph among the Egyptians in Genesis 37–50, as a case study of the themes of biblical hospitality. It ends by outlining the elements of “integration as hospitality” based on close reading of hospitality in Hebrew and Christian scripture.
