Paper short abstract:

In France, to overcome the state's disengagement of "migrants" inflow, citizens decide to host them. Hospitality is not a spontaneous act, it requires an effort. Through occupancy plans and interviews, this contribution focuses on the stories, spaces and times of everyday life of hosts and guests.

Paper long abstract:

In the 2010s, the influx of "migrants" is one of the main topics of French politics. Because Human rights are the foundations of the French Republic, the country can not admit to close its borders like some other countries of the European Union - but it doesn't open them neither.

In the north of France, in Calais, ferry port and centre for transport and trading with Great Britain, many organizations have worked in migrants' informal settlements. In the Alpes-Maritimes, Cédric Herrou, a young farmer and militant who has been arrested several times, became a media figure in welcoming and helping migrants in his region. In the capital, city gates and voids under the sky-train have been appropriated and ethnicized by these travelling populations.

The political decisions, the regularization system, the control and the treatment of "migrant" people demonstrate the current state of crisis. In order to overcome the disengagement of the state with regard to these populations, some citizens (sometimes through associations) decided to host them.

Hospitality is not a spontaneous act, it requires an individual effort: who are these people who have agreed to receive at home, to live with strangers of whom they know nothing?

Through occupancy plans and interviews, this contribution focuses on the stories, spaces and times of everyday life of hosts and guests: the private and the public, the relation to the body, the borders and the thresholds, the spoken and the unspoken, the relationship to technologies, to habits, the stories and worldviews.