Guesting: rethinking the relationship between hospitality and homemaking within temporary refugee accommodation

This paper introduces the emic concept of guesting, coined by women living in refugee accommodation to distinguish their form of hospitality from other more hierarchical forms of hosting. Central to guesting is the unspoken rule that once you have played the host, next time you must be the guest. The reciprocal nature of guesting allows for the continual exchange of gifts and support between the women, creating a strong social network, which acts as a foundation to their homemaking practices. Additionally, guesting acts as a key site for collective remembering, creating a context in which the women can connect to pre‐migratory aesthetics and sensuous evocations. However, the rules and regulations set out by the state‐run refugee accommodation impose limitations on the ways the women in the group are able to use guesting as a homemaking practice. In particular, the guest curfew and the inability to change certain aesthetic features within the rooms remind them of their lack of agency within the accommodation.