ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with the repertoire of hospitality, and refers to Catholic campaigns on the Outsider and the migration issue. Centring on a Spanish–Italian comparison, this chapter reviews the historical sequences in which the repertoire of hospitality was devised, taking a two-stage approach. One the one hand, on the basis of a first survey carried out in 2002–2005, we set out to question the role of the Catholic third sector in the construction of immigration as a public problem in Southern Europe, from the 1980s to the beginning of the decade after 2000. Catholic reactions to the politicization of the migration question in these two countries highlights the political workings of renewed forms of previous Catholic intransigence. This approach is updated by the observations carried out in 2012–2013 of Catholic organizations working with migrants in Brescia, Forlì and the Basque Autonomous Community. In particular, we shall examine the relative adaptation of Church organizations to the rise of the utilitarian figure of the migrant.
