Abstract:
This paper is concerned with the relationship between ¿democracy¿ and ¿hospitality.¿ In public discourse and political debates, democracy is often conceptually invoked in order to confirm the juridical, political or moral validity of a position or mode of action. [1] In relation specifically to understandings of hospitality at a national level toward ¿strangers¿¿refugee or otherwise¿democracy is situated as both a ¿right¿ and a ¿responsibility¿ in the dominant liberal framework. [2] As will be made clear in this paper, the Howard Liberal Coalition government (1996 - 2007) aligned liberal democracy with the right to exclude those persons deemed to be ¿illegal¿ from the body of the nation-state, and to determine the conditions of entry into the nation-state via managed systems of immigration.
