Precarious Roma Village of Northern Paris : A Few Cautious Considerations | THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE
▻http://thefunambulist.net/2015/12/20/precarious-roma-village-of-northern-paris-a-few-cautious-considerati
Saying “it’s a shame to see shantytowns reemerging in Europe!” like we often hear, is not only insufficient, it can even legitimize the political discourses that order their demolitions in the name of public health (whose health?). But defending the collective appropriation of an abandoned terrain as a means of survival, although constituting an important short-term political objective, cannot go without the implacable critique of different modes of sovereignty simultaneously applied on a given territory. As the state of emergency is still operative in France (see past article), and, through it, an even greater discriminate police violence than in “normal” times, we can already foresee the violent eviction of the informal village by the police, despite the legal protection of the “winter break” that theoretically protect anyone to be evicted from a privately owned land during the winter months. As my research often examines how the spatial formations of neighborhoods facilitate or not potential militarized suppression within them, I can only fear of the conditions of this eviction: the Petite Ceinture constitutes a urban canyon with no entry/exit (in this case, two of them and their makeshift stairs have been produced by the inhabitants), and whose linearity would allow the police forces to intervene with the implacable zeal that they often enjoy manifesting. Through the following photos, I hope that giving the informal village a visibility — I have seen very little written about it — would sensitivities a political impetus to be formed, but I have to admit that producing such documents can prove risky and also serve opposite objectives. This text therefore finishes in the same way than it started, with the conscience of cautiousness that our discourses and actions should embrace when the precariousness of lives is involved.
Bien que Léopold Lambert place pour une fois ses photos sous la juridiction usuelle du droit d’auteur et non des creatives commons, je reprends ici sa photo, dument créditée et linkée, comme d’habitude sur @seenthis.
#bidonville #Paris #roumains #roms