Session-1: ‘Religious minorities and multicultural narratives of hospitality in Britain’ In the British neoliberal context, marked by inadequate government responses to the refugee crisis and strong reliance on the third sector (Williams et al 2012), religious and civil society groups have become increasingly active in supporting refugees and asylum seekers. Hospitality as an analytical tool has been used in migration and refugee literature to explore practices and limitations of refugee welcome and integration by faith-based (mostly Christian), humanitarian and refugee-led organisations (Mavelli and Wilson 2017, Farahani 2021, Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Berg 2018). Theological accounts of ‘welcoming strangers’ in religious studies and political theology emphasise the relational importance of hospitality as a key ethics of engagement within and across different religious traditions – often discussed with reference to Christianity (Bretherton 2019), but also Judaism and Islam (Brill 2012, Cummins 2011, Lumbard 2011, Siddiqui 2015). What is missing from these accounts is a more nuanced understanding of mediated forms of hospitality as experienced and negotiated by minority faith and civil society groups in their capacity of relatively ‘settled’ hosts, welcoming the newly arrived ‘others’. This paper intervenes in these debates by drawing on the findings from empirical research which examines Muslim and Jewish responses to welcoming and supporting refugees and asylum seekers on the level of organised civil society. I suggest that a multicultural lens on hospitality, based on the narratives of ‘accommodation’, ‘dialogue’ and ‘vulnerability’ – rooted in both difference and universality – is beneficial to reconfiguring the host/guest relationship and understanding some of the complexities of hospitality and integration.

Session-2: ‘Multiculturalism, religion and hospitable recognition’ Multiculturalism has emerged in Western Europe as a normative and policy response to a contemporary context characterised by religious diversity. Core to multicultural theorising of governance of religious diversity has been the notion of recognition, in relation to identity and to institutional accommodations and relations. Indeed, in its Bristol School variant, we might suggest that multiculturalism is in these ways ’religion friendly’. Nevertheless, looking more closely and carefully at multiculturalism’s core concepts, we see that it also has important shortcomings in relation to the place of religion as such in its conceptual schema. This presentation addresses these concepts and the assumptions that lie behind them. To do so, it draws from an alternative line of thinking which shares some parallels with multiculturalism, namely thinkers from political theology and the notion of hospitality. This presentation will juxtapose work in this area to highlight conceptual shortcomings in multiculturalism or areas that multiculturalism has to date said little about. It will do so, however, with a view to suggesting how multiculturalism itself might address these issues.

Dr Katya Braginskaia is Leverhulme Early Career Fellow and Honorary Senior Research Associate at the University of Bristol, whose current research explores Muslim and Jewish responses to refugee integration and welfare support in England and Scotland. Her academic interests include comparative approaches to minority faith activism, religious pluralism and integration. Thomas Sealy is Lecturer in Ethnicity and Race at the University of Bristol. He has published journal articles on the governance of religious diversity, multiculturalism, racism, Islamophobia, and converts to Islam. His monograph Religiosity and Recognition: Multiculturalism and British Converts to Islam is published by Palgrave Macmillan.

To join online - https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/religion-and-multiculturalism-omissions-and-developments-tickets-465821413387