Outsourcing Hospitality: Power, Responsibility, and Inequality in Community Sponsorship

Under Community Sponsorship (CS) responsibility for supporting resettlement is outsourced to private actors. This generally includes responsibility for sourcing housing. Using a lens informed by hospitality and humanitarian reason, this article examines the ‘hospitable relations’ put in play in sponsorship arrangements in the Irish context. It draws on findings from a small-scale consultative study involving members of volunteer sponsor groups, sponsored persons, and stakeholders in professional roles connected to the programme. The findings provide insight into how ‘hospitality’ under CS necessarily involves the constitution of unequal power dynamics which intersect with wider societal dynamics and inequalities. It is argued that outsourcing responsibility for housing to volunteer sponsors potentially reinforces dependency on groups while placing sponsored people in unequal and exploitative relationships with private landlords and that responsibility for sourcing housing under CS should rest with the state.