Copyright

Vjosa Musliu

Published On

2023-05-11

Page Range

pp. 83–94

Language

  • English

Print Length

12 pages

9. Have You Ever Heard of British Hospitality? Neither Have I

  • Vjosa Musliu (author)
“Why do you want to come to my country; are you going to put my entire existence at risk when you do so; how long will you stay; show me how much money you have before I consider letting you in; are you a terrorist; what is your skin colour”. These questions are the very antidote of hospitality. Yet, they are completely normalized in visa application procedures of Western and European countries. In this auto-ethnographic piece I show the impossibility of British hospitality in its visa procedures for nationals of the Global South. Walking the reader through a personal Kafkaesque visa procedure, I reveal how British hospitality is regulated by governmentality and surveillance, organised by a neoliberal economic model and inherently racist.

Contributors

Vjosa Musliu

(author)
Assistant Professor at Vrije Universiteit Brussel