Tourism and migration as threat and/or promise: Autoimmunity and hospitality in Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer’s <i>Grand Hotel Europa</i>

This article explores Pfeijffer’s novel Grand Hotel Europa using Derrida’s concepts of autoimmunity and hospitality, showing how openness to the Other can be potentially both risky and generative. Pfeijffer depicts a continent trapped in a deadly nostalgia: mass tourism has turned it into a giant theme park in a suicidal autoimmunity which tends to destroy the very authenticity which attracts it in the first place. Pfeijffer also critiques Europe’s fortress-like migration policies as (self)destructive, not only harming would-be migrants but provoking an autoimmune implosion of the very values which supposedly underscore the European integration project. In contrast, he frequently frames immigration as an opportunity for Europe, as a potentially positive autoimmune opening to a renewal of economic and cultural energy.