Advertisement

Tracing the Border Crossings of Forced Migrants in Paris’ 18th Arrondissement: Exploring a Photo-Walk Method

  • Henry Mainsah
  • Carolina Sanchez Boe
Chapter
First Online:
Part of the Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies book series (PMMS)

Abstract

This chapter discusses a photographic walking research experiment that we conducted in the aftermath of a forced evacuation of asylum seekers by police from makeshift camps in Paris. By walking, photography and the analysis of material traces we develop relational embodied and reflexive methods for alternative ways of seeing, experiencing and telling the realities of border enforcement. We show how the process of walking and taking pictures together can open up a relational space where embodied knowledge, and the relationship between visual and other senses are articulated and where reflection and reflexivity among researchers can be enhanced. We argue that by looking at the minutiae, what is ordinarily overlooked, can produce a richer account of marginal spaces and experiences of the violence of border enforcement.

Keywords

Walking Photography Borders Traces 
This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access.

References

  1. Adjepong, A. 2017. Invading Ethnography: A Queer of Color Reflexive Practice. Ethnography.  https://doi.org/10.1177/1466138117741502.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  2. Akoka, K., and O. Clochard. 2009. Dans la jungle des villes. Vacarme 48 (3): 86–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  3. Allerton, C. 2007. The Secret Life of Sarongs: Manggarai Textiles as Super-Skins. Journal of Material Culture 12 (22): 22–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  4. Amoore, L., and A. Hall. 2010. Border Theatre: On the Arts of Security and Resistance. Cultural Geographies 17 (3): 299–319.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  5. Anderson, B. 2009. Affective Atmospheres. Emotion, Space and Society 2 (2): 77–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  6. Appadurai, A. 1990. Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy. Theory, Culture & Society 7 (2–3): 295–310.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  7. Babels: Agier, M., V. Bontemps, C. Makaremi, and S. Mazouz, ed. 2018. Entre accueil et confinement: ce que les villes font aux migrants. Paris: Le Passager Clandestin.Google Scholar
  8. Boe, C.S. 2016. From Banlieue Youth to Undocumented Migrant: Illegalized Foreign-Nationals in Penal Institutions and Public Space. Criminology & Criminal Justice 16 (3): 319–336.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  9. ———. 2019, forthcoming. The Undeported: The Making of a Floating Population of Exiles in France and Europe. Challenging Migration Studies. Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
  10. Boe, C.S., and H.N. Mainsah. 2017. Traces and Places: Making Borders Visible in Paris’ 18th Arrondissement. Retrieved from https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/research-subject-groups/centre-criminology/centreborder-criminologies/blog/2017/06/traces-and-places
  11. Brambilla, C. (2015). Exploring the critical potential of the borderscapes concept. Geopolitics, 20(1), 14–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  12. Cette France-là (Barthélémy, Anne-Isabelle, Catherine Benoît, Vincent Berthe, Carolina Carolina, et alii). 2009. Cette France-Là, Volume 1, 06/05/2007—30/06/2008. Paris: Éditions La Découverte.Google Scholar
  13. ———. 2010. Volume 2. 01/07/2008—30/06/2009 Paris: Éditions La Découverte.Google Scholar
  14. ———. 2012. Sans-papiers & préfets la culture du résultat en portraits. Paris: Éditions La Découverte.Google Scholar
  15. Clerval, A. 2013. Paris sans le peuple. La gentrification de la capitale. Paris: Éditions La Découverte.Google Scholar
  16. Closs Stephens, A. 2016. The Affective Atmospheres of Nationalism. Cultural Geographies 23 (2): 181–198.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  17. Coats, C. 2014. Thinking Through the Photographic Encounter: Engaging with the Camera as Nomadic Weapon. International Journal of Education & the Arts 15 (9): 1–23.Google Scholar
  18. Collins, F.L. 2009. Transnationalism Unbound: Detailing New Subjects, Registers and Spatialities of Cross Border Lives. Geography Compass 3 (1): 434–458.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  19. Cooper, A. 2015. Where Are Europe’s New Borders? Ontology, Methodology and Framing. Journal of Contemporary European Studies 23: 447–458.  https://doi.org/10.1080/14782804.2015.1101266.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  20. Coutin, S. B. (1998). From refugees to immigrants: the legalization strategies of Salvadoran immigrants and activists. International Migration Review, 32(4), 901–925.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  21. ———. 2000. Legalizing Moves: Salvadoran Immigrants’ Struggle for U.S. Residency. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
  22. Cupers, K., and M. Miessen. 2002. Spaces of Uncertainty. Wuppertal: Verlag Müller und Busmann.Google Scholar
  23. De Genova, N.P. 2002. Migrant “Illegality” and Deportability in Everyday Life. Annual Review of Anthropology 31 (1): 419–447.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  24. ———. 2005. Working the Border. Duke University Press.Google Scholar
  25. De León, J. 2013. Undocumented Migration, Use Wear, and the Materiality of Habitual Suffering in the Sonoran Desert. Journal of Material Culture 18 (4): 321–345.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  26. De Sola-Morales, I. 1995. Terrain Vague. In Anyplace, ed. C. Davidson, 118–123. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
  27. Debord, G., and G. Wolman. 1956. A User’s Guide to Détournement. In Situationist International Anthology, trans. and ed. K. Knabb, 14–21. Berkeley, CA: Bureau of Public Secrets.Google Scholar
  28. DeSilvey, C., and T. Edensor. 2013. Reckoning with Ruins. Progress in Human Geography 37 (4): 465–485.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  29. Green, J. 1991. Paris. London: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
  30. Haraway, D. 1988. Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective. Feminist Studies 14 (3): 575–599.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  31. Hauser, K. 2008. Stained Clothes, Guilty Hearts. In If Looks Could Kill: Cinema’s Images of Fashion, Crime and Violence, ed. M. Uhlirova, 68–75. London: Koenig Books.Google Scholar
  32. Horsti, K., and K. Neumann. 2017. Memorializing Mass Deaths at the Border: Two Cases from Canberra (Australia) and Lampedusa (Italy). Ethnic and Racial Studies 42 (2): 141–158. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2017.1394477CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  33. Ingold, T., and J.L. Vergunst. 2008. Ways of Walking: Ethnography and Practice on Foot. Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing.Google Scholar
  34. Irwin, R.L. 2006. Walking to Create an Aesthetic and Spiritual Currere. Visual Arts Research 32 (1): 75–82.Google Scholar
  35. Jung, Y. (2014). Mindful walking: The serendipitous journey of community-based ethnography. Qualitative Inquiry, 20(5), 621–627.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  36. Krikorian, G. 2017. Des grilles pour les migrants. Vacarme 78 (1): 86–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  37. Latham, A., and D.P. McCormack. 2009. Thinking with Images in Non-representational Cities: Vignettes from Berlin. Area 41 (3): 252–262.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  38. Law, J., and J. Urry. 2004. Enacting the Social. Economy and Society 33 (3): 390–310.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  39. Napolitano, V. 2015. Anthropology and Traces. Anthropological Theory 15 (1): 47–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  40. Perec, G. 1997. Species of Spaces and Other Pieces. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
  41. ———. 1999. Things: A Story of the Sixties. Translated by D. Bellos and A. Leak. London: Vintage.Google Scholar
  42. ———. 2010. An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris. Translated by M. Lowenthal. Cambridge: Wakefield Press.Google Scholar
  43. Pink, S. 2008. An Urban Tour: The Sensory Sociality of Ethnographic Place-Making. Ethnography 9 (2): 175–196.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  44. Rosello, Me, and S.F. Wolfe. 2017. Introduction. In Border Aesthetics: Concepts and Intersections, ed. Johan Schimanski and Stephen F. Wolfe, 1–24. New York: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
  45. Stierl, M. 2016. Contestations in Death—The Role of Grief in Migration Struggles. Citizenship Studies 20 (2): 173–191.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Copyright information

© The Author(s) 2019

Authors and Affiliations

  • Henry Mainsah
    • 1
  • Carolina Sanchez Boe
    • 2
    • 3
  1. 1.Oslo Metropolitan UniversityOsloNorway
  2. 2.Aarhus UniversityAarhusDenmark
  3. 3.University of ParisParisFrance

Personalised recommendations

Cite chapter

Buy options