Hospitality Gone Wrong: 1 - Hotels as Mechanism for the Inclusionary Exclusion of Asylum Seekers in Montreal

Guest post by Maxine Both, Meritxell Abellan Almenara, and Karine Côté-Boucher. Maxine Both is a Ph.D. Researcher in the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence, Italy. Her research explores the role of civil society organizations and activists in supporting migrants held in immigration detention in Canada and Italy. Meritxell Abellan Almenara is a PhD candidate in criminology at the University of Montreal. Her thesis project focuses on the ways criminal inadmissibility has transformed the perceptions and practices of judicial actors during the sentencing stage. Karine Côté-Boucher is an Associate Professor at the School of Criminology at the University of Montreal. Her research focuses on border control and technology, immigration and security practices, and the politics of care. Her most recent book Border Frictions: Gender, Generation and Technology on the Frontline is published by Routledge. 

This is part one of a two-part mini series entitled "Hospitality Gone Wrong". 

Introduction 

If Greece detains asylum seekers in camps, Italy quarantines them in cruise ships, and the United States in jails, Canada uses other methods. Beyond confining asylum seekers in jails or immigration holding centers,  Canada also uses hotels to accommodate asylum seekers temporarily. This could be seen as a rather humanitarian, Canadian thing to do, as a country frequently praised for its  welcoming response to refugees. Yet, behind this seeming “hospitality” lies a more troubled reality of migration control for the country. Here we demonstrate how hotels have become a mechanism for the inclusionary exclusion of asylum seekers in Canadian society. In other words, a hospitality gone wrong.     

Initially conceived as a temporary solution to manage a so-called ‘crisis’ of migration, hotels have become a consistent feature of Canada’s asylum seeker reception landscape. As an extension of Canada’s inability to acknowledge incoming asylum seekers as anything beyond an extraordinary situation requiring emergency solutions, hotels illustrate the continuing challenges of federal and provincial migration responses. Already in the years prior (between 2017 and 2019), a legal loophole in the Safe Third Country Agreement generated a channeling of asylum seekers from New York into Quebec, putting strain on local actors and generating a “crisis” mentality. As of 2023, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada has leases and contracts with 23 hotels across the country. As Carrie Dawson noted, Canada’s "discourse of national hospitality is an ambivalent one” situated between ideals of hospitality and an increasing trend towards migration control. As “guests”, asylum-seekers are at the mercy of Canadian authorities, and the benevolent façade of the country quickly disappears when one enters one of the hotels turned-asylum-seeker accommodation. 

As discussed in a previous Border Criminologies post , despite their purpose to accommodate, hotels also act as spaces of confinement. We add to these discussions by inquiring into how refugee shelter-hotels reflect specific micro-geographies of bordering as a result of specific mechanisms of socio-spatial segregation. These hotels showcase how two worlds collide within their walls, that of ‘bona fide’ travelers staying at luxury hotels and that of survival migrants having slept rough for months before their arrival to Montreal. In doing so we challenge the Canadian imaginary of asylum seekers as welcomed with open arms into a multicultural society.  These hotels thereby provide a unique analytical focus to study how the differential dynamics of border control unfold in novel spaces of confinement. 

This two-part post focuses on one hotel in particular – Place Dupuis, located in Montreal, Quebec – to illustrate the flipside of hospitality. Taking our inspiration from Mezzadra and Nielson’s understanding of the border as a site that both excludes and includes, we use an “inclusionary exclusion” lens to reveal these contradictions. This post discusses the mechanisms of exclusion inside the hotel. In this space asylum seekers are excluded from the privileges afforded to paying guests endowed with a more regular legal status – such as tourists, permanent residents, and citizens – and who also temporarily reside in the hotel. Part two interrogates how asylum seeker housing precarity is reproduced outside the hotel, as asylum seekers become included within the social services and policing stream that serves the most vulnerable layers of Montreal’s population. The data used to write this two-part post was obtained by the authors through several visits to the hotel and its surrounding area, as well as an informal conversation with one hotel staff member. 

Segregated Hospitality for Asylum Seekers 

Between the end of 2020 and 2023, many asylum seekers arriving in Québec in need of temporary accommodation have been housed in Place Dupuis, a 4-star hotel located in the Émilie-Gamelin square in downtown Montreal. In need of a temporary solution to manage a high volume of arrivals – the main unofficial border crossing between the US and Quebec until its closure in spring 2023 – vacant hotels recovering from the impacts of COVID-19 offered the government a quick and easy solution. Set up by the Canadian federal government through the Ministry of Immigration, Francisation and Integration (MIFI) of Quebec, the temporary accommodation facility in Place Dupuis was managed locally by staff of the Regional Reception and Integration Program for Asylum Seekers (PRAIDA). In July 2023 the contract with the hotel ended and PRAIDA moved their temporary accommodation to a new custom-built facility.   

Exclusion from Luxury Accommodation 

Because of the temporary nature of asylum seeker accommodation in filling hotel vacancies, this meant that asylum seekers were housed alongside other visitors, as authorities improvised to meet the needs and interests of a variety of stakeholders – hotel management, organizations serving the city’s unhoused, and government-funded refugee and integration organizations. Their coexistence created a segregated micro-geography of hospitality productive of inclusionary exclusion: guests and asylum seekers were spatially sorted and categorized through physical and social mechanisms including separate entrances and different standards of hospitality. 

Directly upon their arrival, asylum seekers were physically excluded from hotel guests. Instead of entering through the main hotel lobby entrance, they would be whisked through a separate entrance. In contrast to the bright and welcoming hotel lobby, the entrance to the temporary accommodation center was hardly visible, tucked away beside the lobby behind artificial hedging with frosted glass. The door was identified only by a small makeshift sign with the name of the organization running it. Separated by a single wall dividing the two spaces, these two entrances worked to separate and hide asylum seekers from hotel guests. Whether this was implemented because of the hotel’s direction, further to IRCC orders, or the result of the architectural layout is beyond our knowledge. However, we can be certain that this space produced mechanisms of exclusion. 

At Place Dupuis, the sifting of guests and asylum seekers through different doors recalled the various racist historical instances when people of colour have been given limited or segregated access to public and private spaces. These sorting mechanisms worked to increase the invisibility of refugees. Through the small, discreet and almost hidden door, asylum seekers would find their rooms alongside PRAIDA’s office, whose staff would guide them through the process of temporary accommodation and provide them with social services. Through the main, bright and well-lit door, hotel guests (i.e., non-asylum seekers) would enjoy their stay in the 4-star part of the hotel.  

While the hotel saw a facelift in the summer of 2021 to prepare for post-pandemic tourism, the rooms for temporary accommodation were left as is. A clear social hierarchy based on immigration status emerged. Hotel guests with tourist visas, permanent residency, or Canadian citizenship would have full access to the newly refurbished hotel and its amenities, while asylum seekers without a secure immigration status would remain within the temporary old accommodation space.   

A Temporary Space of Confusion  

Yet, this segregation often malfunctioned. Without a long-term plan for the accommodation of asylum seekers, Place Dupuis ultimately became a space where populations were sorted, directed, and re-directed. As staff, hotel guests, and asylum seekers searched for the correct entrance or tried to identify and assist diverse populations, they would cross paths or find themselves in the wrong area of the hotel.  

Asylum seekers were not always aware of the implicit expectations of invisibility as they first entered that space. For instance, as a staff member explained during one of the authors’ visits to the hotel, because of the rather hidden appearance of the temporary accommodation entrance, it was not uncommon for asylum seekers to enter the main hotel lobby, only to be swiftly guided to the other entrance by concerned reception staff. Confused hotel guests would sometimes find themselves in the asylum reception office, mistaking a connecting door in the lobby as a washroom or exit. To manage this confusion and minimize contact between hotel guests and asylum seekers, hotel staff would channel groups to their respective sides, maintaining a system of inclusionary exclusion in which two versions of hospitality collided. 

Just as the management of asylum seekers arriving at Roxham Road between 2017 and 2019 was met as a “moment of crisis for the host society” generating chaos from overstretched human and material resources at the Canadian border and in Quebec, the use of hotels as temporary accommodation mirrors a situation whereby actors were wholly unprepared and improvised to meet these needs. In doing so, asylum seekers became spatially and socially excluded inside of the hotel, replicating divisions between insiders and outsiders within the borders of the Canada state.  

Photos (taken by authors): (Left) Main entrance to the temporary accommodation space at Place Dupuis, right-adjacent to the 4-star hotel lobby entrance. Frosted glass windows and an artificial hedge worked to hide the entrance and separate populations based on immigration status. (Right) Interior of the hotel lobby showing a black door at the back wall separating the temporary accommodation space from the hotel lobby.

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