Conference by Michel Agier "Retours sur l'hostipitalité"

In public debates on migration, hostility and hospitality, reception and rejection of foreigners, closure and openness to the Other are systematically opposed. However, in practice and in theory, it is necessary and possible to deepen our understanding of the links between these two conceptions. After having investigated the various forms, ancient and contemporary, individual and collective, of hospitality (L'Étranger qui vient. Repenser l'hospitalité, Seuil 2018 and Points 2022 pocket), anthropologist Michel Agier questions the foundations of hostility based on three areas: fears, borders and undesirability (La peur des autres, Payot & Rivages, 2022). What continuity, what rupture, exist between one and the other?

Ethnologist and anthropologist Michel Agier is Director of Research at the Institute for Development Research and Director of Studies at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS). Since the early 1990s, he has conducted extensive fieldwork in Africa and Latin America, focusing on marginalized urban areas and refugee camps. His most recent work focuses on contemporary migratory movements, on the conditions of reception and life of migrants, a cause for which he is also involved in the associative world. His latest book, La peur des autres, essai sur l'indésirabilité, was published in 2022 by Rivages.