Multiple expulsions. Affective and material evictions in Calais

If we regard expulsions as the abrupt interruption along the territorialisation process of any body in search of refuge, we could see displaced people and migrants as those figures that have to cope with multiple expulsions until they can build a less vulnerable and precarious territory. Drawing on an ethnographic fieldwork in the makeshift camp of Calais known as the Jungle, I outline a relentless movement of expulsion-inclusion, which is both material and affective and operates on different dimensions. In the Jungle of Calais, from March 2015 to October 2016 lived thousands of people coming mainly from Afghanistan, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Pakistan, who created a city-like system together with volunteers from UK and France. Both the French state and the aid groups built their own territories by establishing different kind of relations with the residents of the Jungle, thus contributing to (at least temporarily) stabilise or destabilise their search for a territory of their own and engaging in less visible practices of expulsion.