Paper details
| Paper authors | Gabrielle Daoust, Synne L. Dyvik |
| In panel on | Mapping Feminist Approaches to Humanitarian Action |
| Paper presenter(s) will be presenting |
In-Person / |
Abstract
Within weeks of the first bombs falling on Ukraine in February 2022, millions of people fled to neighbouring countries and across Europe. People throughout Europe and beyond were mobilised into action and from the outset, the response to this unfolding humanitarian crisis was a complex and often messy web of private and public initiatives. In this paper we focus on the unique British humanitarian response known as “Homes for Ukraine”, through which over 130,000 Ukrainians have been hosted in private homes in the UK, and offer a feminist analysis of its practice and politics. After briefly discussing the history of the scheme, showing how it sits alongside wider refugee responses and migration regimes, we situate this particular form of response within a longer history of private humanitarian hospitality. Drawing on primary and secondary data, we first contend that the scheme signals a crystallisation of an increased reliance on private humanitarian action and an outsourcing of government responsibility to private individuals. Secondly, we show how this unique humanitarian response and an associated shifting of humanitarian space into the private and domestic sphere, is enabled by particular gendered and racialised conceptions of the home and of humanitarian hospitality more broadly.
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