Un’ospitalità ostile. Etnografia delle politiche per gli sfrattati a Milano

In this article, I analyze the social and political production of inequalities implied in eviction policies in the context of Milan (Italy). I suggest that eviction, and first of all institutionalized hospitality policies activated mainly as public support for evicted families, represent instead a dispositive for social exclusion. In this sense, hospitality seems to represent an ambiguous and complex set of public policies, social practices, cultural representations and symbolic aspects aimed at producing a hierarchical taxonomy of forms of citizenship. In the first part of the article, through a review of the existing literature on the topic, I take into account hospitality with a range of anthropological concepts. In the second part, I investigate the historical process (1884-2016) producing a local specificity in the public management of hospitality policies for evicted. In conclusion, I present some ethnographic case studies – with a focus on mother and child communities – that show the ambiguity of hospitality policies in Milan.