Radical Hospitality

American Policy, Media, and Immigration

By Nour Halabi

Rutgers University Press

Radical Hospitality: American Policy, Media, and Immigration re-imagines the ethical relationship of host societies towards newcomers by applying the concept of hospitality to two specific realms that impact the lives of immigrants in the United States: policy and media. The book calls attention to the moral responsibility of the host in welcoming a stranger. It sets the stage for the analysis with a historical background of the first host-guest diads of American hospitality, arguing that the early history of American hospitality was marked by the degeneration of the host-guest relationship into one of host-hostage, normalizing a racial discrimination that continues to plague immigration hospitality to this day. Author Nour Halabi presents a historical policy and media discourse analysis of immigration regulation and media coverage during three periods of US history: the 1880s and the Chinese Exclusion Act, the 1920s and the National Origins Act and the 2000s and the Muslim travel ban. In so doing, it demonstrates how U.S. immigration hospitality, from its peaks in the post-Independence period to its nadir in the Muslim travel ban, has fallen short of true hospitality in spite of the nation’s oft-touted identity as a “nation of immigrants.” At the same time, the book calls attention to how a discourse of hospitality, although fraught, may allow a radical reimagining of belonging and authority that unsettles settler-colonial assumptions of belonging and welcome a restorative outlook to immigration policy and its media coverage in society.

An important book that focuses on a fundamental contradiction between the legal protection offered to immigrants to the USA through the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution on the one hand, and the anti-immigrant sentiment, which inflects public discourse and ever more restrictive immigration policies on the other. Writing from her first-hand experience of having to negotiate the immigration process for herself and her family, the author advocates her unique vantage point. She takes an historico-political perspective to explore shifting policies around immigration, both legislative (regulatory hospitality) and media-oriented (media hospitality), the extent to which immigrants are or are not ‘welcomed’ to the USA, and how different orientations contribute to how immigrants can ‘build’ a home in their adopted country. The methodology for data collection during the three sample periods is well-described and the rationale for the choice of periods is persuasive as is the volume of material analysed; the archival research is impressive. It is a significant and scholarly book which provides some important insights through its use of the ‘hospitality’ concept and its historical orientation. Judges for the 2023 Media, Communication, and Cultural Studies Association Outstanding Book Award

Nour Halabi masterfully tracks the representation of immigrants in American media and how it shapes popular perceptions about immigrants and policies on immigration. She brings attention to the silenced histories of immigration in the US context and invites us to make the connections between these silences and the current reality of these marginalized groups.'
Wunpini Fatimata Mohammed, Department of Entertainment & Media Studies, University of Georgia

The media plays a key role in shaping immigration discourse in the United States. Nour Halabi’s excellent book, Radical Hospitality, sheds light on how contradictory ideas of hospitality and xenophobia can both exist through her analysis of immigration regulation and media coverage during key historical periods of U.S. history from the Chinese Exclusion Act to the Muslim travel ban.'

Nancy Yuen, author of Reel Inequality: Hollywood Actors and Racism

NOUR HALABI is an assistant professor at the School of Media and Communication at the University of Leeds in the UK.

1 The Case for Hospitality
2 Poisoned Beginnings: The Birth of the (Immigrant) Nation
3 The Move to Exclude: Chinese Exclusion Act (1880s)
4 The Rise of Nativism: National Origins Act (1920s)
5 The Shift to National Security: Patriot Act (2000s)
6 Conclusion: The Future of American Hospitality
Appendix A: Note on Reflexivity and Methods
Appendix B: Regulatory Documents
Acknowledgments
Notes
References
Index

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