This presentation focuses on volunteers and idea-based organizations’ involvement in refugee reception in rural areas. In our presentation, we will discuss how refugee reception is done in relation to gender, place and the dismantling of welfare. The study is based on interviews with seven BLOCK II g 100 volunteers and employees in two rural towns in northern Sweden. Our study shows that the social support to refugees in the studied towns seems to rest much on (older) women’s hospitality work and church organisations. In these small cities, a few organisations organize and engage in a broad spectrum of activities. The volunteers use their private networks as well as organized networks for organizing the activities. The women we interviewed seem to have a particular interest in engaging with female refugees in traditionally female practices such as baking and sewing invoking particular emotional motives and racialized scripts of refugee women in need of specific caring practices.