Lois Lindholm

Doctoral student

Doctoral student

The title of my PhD is “Hospitality and Integration: Ethics, Politics and Theology”. I discuss whether a state can be hospitable? Is hospitality foremost a right? The academic discourse concerning hospitality, mainly inspired by ideas of philosopher Jacques Derrida, seem to mean that. Migration ethicists use hospitality mainly as a way to talk about states asylum politics and of human rights. I mean that this discourse is misleading and to a degree inaccurate and suggest instead that hospitality has more to do with integration than with migration. Therefore, I aim to explore the concept of hospitality and discuss it in relation to integration in the context of a liberal society. I also aim to explore how hospitality is understood in religious traditions, focusing on Christian traditions.

The project is called “Hospitality and Integration: Ethics, Politics and Theology”. From a virtue ethics perspective, I will ask questions like: What potential and what risks lies in hospitality? What kind of character is needed in order to be hospitable? Which theological aspects are there to hospitality? How do hospitality and integration relate?