Authors : Marie-Caroline Saglio-Yatzimirsky, director of the IC Migrations and profesor at Inalco, and Alexandra Galitzine-Loumpet, anthropologist and fellow at IC Migrations. Translated by : Elisabeth Heseltine and Melissa Thackway
Several of our fellows contributed to the writing of this book, including Pauline Doyen, Naoual Mahroug, Marilou Sarrut, Léo Manac’h, Louise Tassin, Daniela Trucco,Yasmine Bouagga, and Michel Agier.
Summary. This book is the fruit of four years’ research by the Liminal team (Linguistic and Intercultural Mediations in a context of International Migrations – ANR, Inalco, 2017–2021) in camps and reception centres for asylum seekers. Surveys were carried out in Pashto, Persian, Arabic(s), Urdu, Tigrinya, French, English, Italian, as close to the actors as possible, in the Paris region, the Calais and on the French- English and French-Italian borders. Using an original methodology and a multi-disciplinary approach at the crossroads of anthropology and sociolinguistics, the book draws up a migralect, the performative language of the camps and borders, to determine the power of language in the constrained situations. The Talking Camps offers a new perspective on language, highlighting what is at the core of migration : a political experience of violence and resistance. The migrant reception crisis has rocked Europe since 2015 and remains a contentious issue in the current political scenario. The plunge into the linguistic universe of exile and asylum will be of unprecedented interest to migration and refugee studies scholars, those working in the field, the media and to the general public.
Table of content.
Foreword — Ranabir Samaddar
Introduction — Babel Camps Marie-Caroline Saglio-Yatzimirsky
Part 1 — Languages in Emergency
- The Bubble of Babel : language practices and spaces of understanding in a reception centre, Paris
Maraudes. Emergency outreach on the Paris camps - The whispers and resistant voices of exiles in an emergency housing centre
- Double exile in a village in the Var : Life forms and moral code of language
- Can we be friends ? Naming the relationship between volunteers and refugees in a PRAHDA
(Non)-use of translation in detention. Institutional blockages and informal mediations in detention centres for foreigners
Part 2 — Migralect, languages of migration
- The survival of languages : language practices and linguistic landscapes in centres for refugees in France
- The words of asylum : experiencing the law through the of language
- Translating at the border : Professional, sociolinguistic and political issues in mediation in Ventimiglia, Italy
- Interactions in Calais and Dover. From a language of urgency to a border Language
- “I write this souvenir so it may last a lifetime.” From wall language to border-writing. Reflections on graffiti in the migratory experience
- “You speak Azil?” Conclusion on the emergence of a migralect
- Methodological Epilogue— Language and the Other. For an interactional anthropology of migration
Afterword — Since we have to talk about asylum, Michel Agier
Find more information on the website of Setu Prakashani.