Why Do Host-Country Residents and Local Hosting Actors Host Refugees? A JBI Scoping Review Protocol on Motivations, Hospitality Practices, Challenges, and Impacts in Private and Community Hosting

Background: Private and community hosting have emerged as important community-based responses to forced displacement, through which host-country citizens provide accommodation, practical support, and relational care to refugees in domestic and community settings. These hosting arrangements extend hospitality beyond commercial and tourism contexts into everyday spaces of welcome, co-living, and social support. Existing literature has examined a range of hosting experiences, including reasons citizens choose to host, ways hospitality is practiced, challenges arising from hosting, and the impacts of hosting on hosts, refugees, and communities. However, the evidence remains fragmented across disciplines, including migration studies, social work, sociology, public health, and hospitality scholarship. Objective: This scoping review aims to map and synthesize the existing literature on why host-country residents and local hosting actors host refugees, with a focus on hosting motivations, hospitality practices, challenges, and impacts in private and community hosting. Methods: This review will follow the Joanna Briggs Institute methodology for scoping reviews and be reported in accordance with the PRISMA-ScR guidelines. Guided by the Population–Concept–Context framework, the review will include studies involving host-country residents and local hosting actors, engaged in refugee hosting. Literature published in English from 2010 onward will be identified through searches in MEDLINE, CINAHL, PsycINFO, Scopus, Web of Science, Sociological Abstracts, Social Services Abstracts, and selected grey literature sources. Two reviewers will independently screen records and extract data, which will be analyzed descriptively and thematically to map motivations, hospitality practices, challenges, and impacts in private and community hosting. Results: The review will generate a comprehensive map of the literature on refugee hosting in private and community settings. It will identify how hosting is conceptualized and practiced, the motivations driving citizen involvement, the relational and structural challenges associated with hosting, and the reported impacts on hosts, refugees, and communities. It will also highlight system-level support, policy considerations, and gaps requiring further attention through research and practice. Conclusions: This scoping review will provide an interdisciplinary synthesis of evidence on refugee hosting as a form of social and domestic hospitality. The findings will inform future research, policy, and community-based hosting initiatives and will contribute to a deeper understanding of the ethical, relational, and structural dimensions of refugee hospitality and hosting in host countries.