‘The police in every hotel’? Hospitality governance in Antwerp during the long nineteenth century

Abstract:This article analyses the various ways in which the commercial hospitality sector of nineteenth-century Antwerp, and by extension Belgium, was governed by rules enforced by a myriad of government and non-government actors. It uses the concept of hospitality governance to look beyond well-trodden themes in migration regulation like settlement and welfare, into the realms of categorisation of migrants and the power dynamics involved in appropriating informal spaces. In the context of nineteenth-century liberalism, changing city-state relations and growing bureaucratic ambitions, the analysis reveals the inherent inequalities of a registration regime which ostensibly had a ‘universal’ character.

Publication year:2025

Keywords:Sociology

Accessibility:Embargoed