Architect and teacher at the École nationale supérieure d’architecture de Paris-Belleville, Cyrille Hanappe has been involved for several years in the slums of Île-de-France and in the refugee camps of the North. He reminds us that, if the shantytown and the camp have long been unthinkable, they are in fact long-term. Refugee camps will eventually become neighborhoods in our cities.
Images and shooting: Antarès Bassis and Adrien Rivollier.
Images from the refugee camps reproduced with the kind permission of Films du Balibari.
Editing: Antarès Bassis.
Interview transcript
The Life of Ideas : Can you give a brief history of the Sangatte center and the Grande-Synthe refugee camp?
Cyrille Hanappe: For reasons that are quite difficult to explain, France accepted that the English border would be dealt with on French territory, and not on English territory. From the end of the 1990s, there was a bottleneck phenomenon in Calais, which was initially dealt with by the opening of a reception center in Sangatte, under the Jospin government, to welcome arriving migrants. This Sangatte center gradually filled up. In 2002, claiming a phenomenon of “air draft”, Nicolas Sarkozy, then Minister of the Interior, decided to close the Sangatte center. But this will not at all have the expected effect: populations from all over the world will continue to flock and the phenomenon will increase, especially in Calais, but also on the northern coast, on the Channel coast and in all places which provide access to England.
From 2004, the phenomenon of migrants in Dunkirk began to increase. The town of Grande-Synthe then lets migrants know that they can go to a clearing, a small wood called “Le Basroch”. Between 2005 and 2015, there will be around 50 people at all times, mainly of Kurdish, Iraqi, Iranian and Turkish nationality, with a few Vietnamese. In 2015, for reasons linked to the situation in Syria, the population exploded: from around 50 in June 2015, there were nearly 3,000 in September 2015. At that time, the migrants lived in appalling conditions. , namely in the mud. A new site, the Linière camp, will take over in 2016.
The Life of Ideas : What does an architect come to do in Grande-Synthe?
Cyrille Hanappe: An architect is someone who knows how to think about space and who asks how people come together, in a given place, to live in a certain harmony, with a certain quality of life and a certain security. For a very long time, the slum and the camp were part of a global unthinking. This phenomenon was growing and was considered a kind of necessary evil, which needed to be curbed.
It was only relatively recently, that is to say less than ten years ago, that we became aware that this phenomenon was here to stay. There are in fact two billion people, or 30% of the world population, who will soon live in informal housing, whatever it may be. There is also the phenomenon of displaced people: 57 million displaced people in 2015, almost the population of France. These are all people who are called to live in camps, shanty towns, sometimes even squats. However, until now, no one thought about how these people would live together.
The Life of Ideas : We hear it said, here and there, that the French do not want refugees. What was the attitude of the population in Grande-Synthe?
Cyrille Hanappe: Grande-Synthe is a very special town, because it was truly born in the 1960s, a bit like a new town. Indeed, with the installation of Usinor-Arcelor, the population increased from 1,500 to 15,000 inhabitants. This population will develop a tradition of welcome and mutual aid, undoubtedly linked to the working condition and the migratory condition, since the inhabitants were often immigrants themselves. There is therefore a very particular culture in Grande-Synthe.
The mayor of Grande-Synthe, Damien Carême, son of the former mayor, knows that the population is poor, but, having large industries on its territory, the city lives on 90% of the professional tax. There is a popular university in Grande-Synthe.
The reception of migrants was therefore good and generous. There have been no known manifestations of aggression towards migrants. So, the aid associations of Grande-Synthe have opened up to this new neighborhood – because, in my opinion, it is a new neighborhood. For example, there is the association “Les jardin fleurs”, which puts flowers at the bottom of buildings in Grande-Synthe. She came to the Linière camp and she is now flowering the camp.
The Life of Ideas : Referring to an association established in the refugee camp, a journalist writes: “We do not manage a refugee camp the way we manage a rave party at the Vieilles Charrues festival”. The issues, in fact, are numerous: rules of life, schooling of children, security standards, maintenance of public order, etc. Who actually manages the refugee camps?
Cyrille Hanappe: Today, in the Grande-Synthe camp, there are three main actors: the town hall, the State and the associations. These three actors have a very different approach to the issue. The State has had the same vision since the 1930s (I am thinking in particular of the Rivesaltes camp): a camp is used to manage supernumerary individuals, who must be treated like objects that are fed and laundered. At the other end, there are the associations, which have a very liberal philosophy on the issue, according to which these people are as capable of managing their daily lives as others. I share this liberal position, because it comes from observing what is happening around the world.
The town hall of Grande-Synthe has, for its part, chosen a middle position. Indeed, in Calais, only two options have developed, and in a caricatured manner: either the “container camp”, where everyone is managed like a number; or the slum, which has great urban and spatial qualities, but which suffers from the absence of common law. The Grande-Synthe town hall is therefore looking for an intermediate response, which can reconcile the two approaches. The question is ultimately quite simple: how to bring common law back into the camp? I am thinking, for example, of the need for a police presence, which helps prevent the development of mafias.
The Life of Ideas : You wrote in March 2016: “The migrant camp is more than a shantytown, it is more than a city, it is the laboratory of the city of XXIe century “. Could the refugee camp be the future of our cities?
Cyrille Hanappe: Particularly linked to global warming, we know that there will be more and more migrations. We are going to have a mode of constitution of the city which will be done in a very different way, with sudden increases and decreases in population and with people who arrive with little money. The city, European in particular, has always been built on the accumulation of capital. However, today, this is happening with poor people who arrive quickly. Consequently, this city, somewhat inevitably, is very ecological, since there is little money and we therefore have to make do with limited means. For example, homes must be well insulated, because we have few means of heating. De facto, all of this is part of local economies. It is a city which is therefore recycled, recyclable, which consumes little energy, which is economical, social and environmental.
In Grande-Synthe, the Linière camp – I don’t want it to be called a “camp”, but “the Linière district” – will, like all camps, stay longer than we think. We must therefore stop thinking in the short term and tell ourselves that we have entered the long term. The Linière camp will one day be a district of Grande-Synthe.
Comments collected by Ivan Jablonka
Transcription: Vincent Boyer