Geography

Article published in The Conversation from ongoing research in the 'New Jungle' migrant camp in Calais. While the UK government is approaching the migrant crisis through the lens of security, we argue that it is time we see the situation in Calais as the humanitarian crisis that it is.

Link to original article: https://theconversation.com/is-this-really-europe-refugees-in-calais-speak-of-desperate-conditions-45414

Authors: Thom Davies, Arshad Isakjee, Thom Davies

From Lampedusa in Italy to Calais in France, a constellation of camps has spread across the continent. With the Mediterranean migration crisis continuing to unleash privation and mortality on the bodies of countless migrants, the camp is fast becoming Europe’s unofficial answer; a de facto solution to European political inertia. Having witnessed the birth of one such refugee camp – the ‘new Jungle’ in Calais – this editorial asks how we can respond to the prodigious and increasingly ‘necropolitical’ (Mbembe, 2003) realities of the migration emergency.

This study constitutes the first independent scientific study of the new Calais migrant camp. The findings confirm that migrants in the informal camp are living in perilous conditions, which are significantly contributing to their ill-health and injury. Furthermore, the shortcomings in shelter, food and water safety, personal hygiene, sanitation and security are likely to have detrimental long-term health consequences for the camp’s residents over their lifecourse. It is our assessment that the situation in Calais amounts to a humanitarian crisis and requires far greater resource than has been provided to date by state agencies to protect migrants in the camp. Conditions in the camp do not meet standards recommended by UNHCR, WHO or the Sphere project.

A significant outcome of the global crisis for refugees has been the abandonment of forced migrants to live in makeshift camps inside the EU. This paper details how state authorities have prevented refugees from surviving with formal provision, leading directly to thousands having to live in hazardous spaces such as the informal camp in Calais, the site of this study. We then explore the violent consequences of this abandon-ment. By bringing together thus far poorly integrated literatures on bio/necropolitics (Michel Foucault; Achille Mbembe) and structural violence (Johan Galtung), we retheorize the connections between deliberate political indifference towards refugees and the physiological violence they suffer. In framing the management of refugees as a series of violent inactions, we demonstrate how the biopolitics of migrant control has given way to necropolitical brutality. Advancing geographies of violence and migration, the paper argues that political inaction, as well as action, can be used as a means of control.

The ongoing emergency for refugees is having profound and hidden health consequences for thousands of displaced persons who live in informal ‘makeshift’ camps across Europe. This interdisciplinary paper reports the results of the first environmental health assessment in such a location, in what was Europe’s largest informal refugee camp in 2016, in Calais, northern France. We detail the lack of facilities for sanitation, safe provision of food, water and shelter, demonstrating how conditions fall short of agreed international standards for formal refugee camps. Rather than the notion of migrants being the cause of health problems, this paper critically reveals the hidden materiality of bodily injury caused by poor health conditions, where the camp itself produces harm. Drawing upon theories of biopolitical exclusion, the paper concludes by (i) emphasising the empirical and conceptual themes that tie refugee politics and biologies together and (ii) makes a call for increased attention to makeshift camps as key sites of health exclusion in Europe and beyond.

Published in 1999, the book Human Geography Today (Massey, et al. [eds]), offers a tentative “manifesto” for “certain very broad ways of doing human geography.” As a collection of essays, it presents a series of snapshots into what were then emerging themes, concepts, ideas and approaches within the discipline. Each chapter was authored by scholars who were, and continue to be, ‘household names’ within the discipline of geography and academia more widely. Indeed, many of the ideas presented in the book have become staples of contemporary human geography, forming the bedrock of geographic work as many of us still know and do it. The aim of this session is thus to connect the manifesto and ideas set out in the book to the discipline of Human Geography today, reflecting on why and how some ideas in the book have been taken up, adapted, and furthered; whilst others have somewhat faded into the background. The session also aims to question what ideas might have been missing from the book at its time of publication but have since emerged as forceful drivers of contemporary human geographic thought. The panel features a number of the original authors of the book, who will each offer a brief reflection on the ideas that they and the book presented, as well as offering insights into the future of the discipline as they see it.

Panel members:
John Allen (The Open University, UK)
Sarah Radcliffe (University of Cambridge, UK)
Susan J. Smith (University of Cambridge, UK)
Gill Valentine (University of Sheffield, UK)