Walking as solidarity, protest, and bearing witness: Supporting unhoused migrants in Paris

Abstract (English)

In 2020, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that asylum seekers in France were subjected to ‘inhuman and degrading living conditions’. While the French state has an obligation to provide housing to people going through the asylum process, the prevalence of tent encampments across the city over the last decade attests to the state’s failure to meet this legal requirement. To support state efforts and create an image of Paris as a ‘city of refuge’, the municipal government has relied heavily on civil society groups to provide care, supplies, and information to unhoused migrants. As a result, multiple networks of informal collectives and official associations have formed to welcome and provide support to people across the capital. In this paper, I focus on the maraudes, or mobile outreach activities, of Solidarité Migrants Wilson (SMW), a non-hierarchical collective of activists who cook, package, and distribute hundreds of meals around the northern edges of Paris. Donning hi-vis vests with the slogan ‘abusive state, citizens in solidarity’ printed on back, SMW activists navigate the nooks and crannies created by transport infrastructure to deliver hot meals where people camp, socialise, or beg. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2019-2023, I explore the importance of mobility in providing care for an increasingly invisibilised and dispersed population. I argue that, beyond a method for moving around, walking on maraude is an act of care rooted in solidarity, protest, and bearing witness to state neglect and border violence.