National collaborative projects
Other projectsBabels
What cities do to migrants, and what migrants do to cities
The so-called “migrant crisis” of summer 2015 made the treatment of migrants a major issue at European and national level. Cities emerged as central new players in migrant hospitality. As spaces in which different levels of political decision-making are interwoven, inhabited by new arrivals alongside longer-established residents, European capitals and border cities attracted attention for their ability to implement their own individual policies regarding migrants, either welcoming or hostile.
A series of interlinked ethnographic investigations followed migrants on their journeys within cities, at the edges of cities or between cities. The spaces they passed through or inhabited are border-places that bring forth forms of sociability and solidarity shaped and transformed partly by the presence and social behaviours of migrants.
ANR programme: Flash Asile 2016
Edition, project duration: 2016, 39 months
ANR grant: €264,600
Coordinator:
- Michel AGIER
Institut Interdisciplinaire d’Anthropologie du Contemporain - IIAC
agier@ehess.fr
https://anrbabels.hypotheses.org/
Project region: Île-de-France
Main publication or contribution:
- Collection « bibliothèque des frontières » aux éditions du Passager clandestin (7 volumes : De Lesbos à Calais : comment l’Europe fabrique des camps ; La mort aux frontières de l’Europe : retrouver, identifier, commémorer ; Entre accueil et rejet : ce que les villes font aux migrants ; Exils syriens : parcours et ancrages (Liban, Turquie, Europe) ; Méditerranée : des frontières à la dérive, le passager clandestin ; La police des migrants : filtrer, disperser, harceler ; Hospitalité en France : mobilisations intimes et politiques).
- Agier Michel, Yasmine Bouagga, Maël Galisson, Cyrille Hanappe, Mathilde Pette, et Philippe Wannesson (2018), La Jungle de Calais. Les migrants, la frontière et le camp, Puf, Paris (ouvrage traduit en anglais, italien et allemand).
Partner:
- City of Paris
The Babels project studied frontier situations – legal, geographic, social and cultural – in order to support intervention in the public debate. By distinguishing between crossroads cities, border cities and refuge cities, the project demonstrated various aspects of the relationship between cities and mobility.