Presentation short abstract

What do town people when they try to help amphibians’ migration across the city’s roads ? They do a voluntary “work of subsistence” that resists mass deaths and creates multispecies wordling on the margins of modern techno-fix cultures.

Presentation long abstract

Each year, in unexpected corners of Brussels, several thousand toads, frogs, and newts migrate to reach the water bodies where they breed. While this city was still dotted with marshes just over a century ago, these amphibians must now cross streets, even wide avenues, in order to reach their destination and then return to their terrestrial shelter. Their migration and their seasonal mass deaths under the wheels remain largely unknown, apart from a handful of urban dwellers who spend their winter evenings, month after month, helping them to cross traffic infrastructure.

I will present my study of this case in dialogue with the research of sociologist G. Pruvost on the “work of subsistence” (2021). The connections she draws between subsistence feminism (inspired by Marxism and anarchism), the politicization of everyday life, and vernacular societies (Y. Illich) enable me to describe the efforts of my interlocutors as more than a naturalist leisure activity, and as more than commitments in solidarity with amphibian life ; it is also, above all, lots of voluntary care work. It consists of repeated watches and interactions in the cold and dark nights. It generates vernacular knowledge about these animals and the surrounding territory. And it weaves interdependent life cycles. Whereas infrastructure projects (road accessories, toad tunnels) never suffice to halt the massacre during those migrations, the invisible and obstinate work of town people not only ensures the possibility of urban amphibian life, but it also creates multispecies wordling on the margins of modern techno-fix cultures.