The Ideal of absolute hospitality and the reality of anti-migrant fences

ENThirty years ago, East-Central Europeans celebrated the fall of the Iron Curtain in the hope that they will be able to build democracy and capitalism. Then, in 2004, some of these countries joined the European Union and later Schengen – the borderless European Union. But today formerly c\Communist Bulgaria has an anti-migrant fence, which we can call Iron Curtain 2. This time it is on the Eastern side of Bulgaria. Other countries such as the Baltic States have a border with Russia and an EU border – something that was unimaginable in 1989. It was unimaginable in the early 1990s too, as the Soviet Army troops took time to withdraw from newly independent countries. This chapter does not analyse to what extent the new Iron anti-migrant Curtain is legitimate and justified or unjustified both morally and politically; in- stead the focus is on the ideal of absolute hospitality to the Other and the problem of adopting such hospitality in social reality.