Disrupting binary thinking about sanctuary initiatives in the UK and Australia: insights from a Derridean analysis of hostipitality

Despite their geographical distance, the UK and Australia share proximity with their hostile immigration policies and managed migration practices, characterised by inhumanity under the guise of deterrence. People Seeking Asylum (PSA) who seek sanctuary typically endure protracted temporariness, which denies them access to state resources and imposes limitations on access to post-compulsory education. Despite state-endorsed exclusion, universities in both countries have developed approaches to circumventing immigration barriers by offering access via scholarships. The case of PSA, therefore, offers insights into the ways that Derrida’s notion of ‘hostipitality’ – a conceptualisation of the tangled binary of hospitality and hostility – operates in higher education. In this article, we explore the types of hospitality that universities across the UK and Australia have invited PSA to cross the threshold into university study and transcend barriers imposed at the national level, and question how these modes of ‘welcome’ work to counter sector and state-level apparatus of rejection or reinforce existing barriers. We construct our argument around the disruption of three key binaries: host/stranger; settled/unsettled immigration status; and deserving/undeserving migrant. In doing so, we navigate the complexity of the conditions shaping access and welcome as forms of sanctuary within universities.