TENBordering on Reproducing the StateMigrant Solidarity Collectives and Constructions

of the Other in ‘Safer Spaces’

Claire English

At around nine o’clock in the evening, during the summer of 2010, agroup of twelve activists from the ‘Calais Migrant Solidarity’ grouppulled off the motorway that leads to the French port, and drove up tothe stretch of abandoned road known as the ‘Kurdish Jungle’. . . . We’darrived with bags of rice and lentils, as we were invited to dinner witha group of Iraqi Kurdish migrants. They’d already sourced fish andpotatoes from elsewhere.Suddenly a large truck printed with the logo of a famous British gro-cery store swung violently round the corner. The driver stuck his headout the window: “Hey, girls! Get out of here! It’s dangerous!” heshouted in a thick cockney accent. “Why?” a number of us replied,although we already suspected we knew his answer. “It’s not safe, thisplace is crawling with immigrants!” he bellowed dramatically. “We arealso immigrants” shouted a German comrade in reply, “and we’vecome here to eat with them”.The driver swore loudly in disbelief and lurched the van back in toreverse, the last we heard from him was: “Well then, you girls arebloody asking for it! You deserve what you get!”, as his truck spedtoward the border (cited in English 2010, 5).

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INTRODUCTION

This confrontation took place near the port of Calais—the UK’s ‘gatewayto Europe’—between a British truck driver and a group of activist womenfrom the collective Calais Migrant Solidarity. It illustrates quite succinctlythe themes I wish to highlight, regarding the post–September 11 politicalcontext and its particular relationship to the concept of ‘racialised’ andmigrant Others. It also draws attention to the gendered nature of ima-gined vulnerabilities at the border between ‘them’ and ‘us’, demonstratedby the truck driver’s need to protect ‘our’ women from ‘their’ men. With-in this context of variously layered ‘practices of homeland security’(Brown 2003, 1), it is easy to understand the anti-racist activist’s increas-ing investment in the construction of an activist notion of safety ‘frombelow’, and/or an interest in creating alternative or community-basedforms of ‘security’ and ‘justice’ as a response to the political climate (Jack-son and Meiners 2011; Smith 2013; Wang 2012).

This chapter will, therefore, examine the political activity and organ-isation of transnational migrant solidarity collectives and projects basedin the UK and on the French/British border zone of Calais, an economical-ly deprived border town that has, in many ways, found itself at the focalpoint on both sides of the debate about irregular migration into the UK.

Questions of safety are increasingly urgent following the recent clear-ance of the sleeping encampments on 28 May 2014:

More than 300 police descended on Calais to evict three tent camps inthe city centre which have been in use since last October: the Syriancamp, which was set up following an occupation of the port, the Eri-trean camp under the bridge, which was established after the evictionof their squat, also in October, and a smaller camp close to the fooddistribution. Together these places were home to around 650 people inCalais. The operation was deemed a ‘humanitarian intervention’, citingscabies and poor sanitation as a basis from which to detain and deportmany of the migrants (Calais Migrant Solidarity 2014).1

The routine closure of places for sanitation, both large (such as theSangatte Centre in 2003, a shelter run by the Red Cross) and small (suchas the showers in activist squats and social centres), have all but forcedpeople to live in very crowded conditions without regular access to toi-lets, showers or places to wash their clothes and bedding. These placesare closed down by the border authorities in case they are used by ‘peo-ple traffickers’, as this would feed border insecurity, the only question ofsafety that they appear to feel is worth addressing.

Within transnational migrant solidarity projects, activists have em-braced a variety of concepts, including safer spaces, community account-ability and grassroots justice, in an attempt to negate brutal, racialisednotions of state-sanctioned security practices, where ‘protection’ is guar-

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anteed through tighter border controls and the consolidation of the pris-on-industrial complex (see Gilmore 2007).

In this chapter, I will use the word ‘safety’ to refer to the affectivenotion of feeling care (see below), that I think is necessary and desirablefor human sociality. On the other hand, I use the word ‘security’ for theinstitutional and state-sanctioned responses to feelings of being unsafe,that I think perpetuate the process of ‘Othering’ in both the mainstreamdiscourse about migrants post–September 11, and also (problematically)in the anti-racist activist collectives in which I participate.

This piece is based on research on the migrant solidarity groups I havebeen involved with for the last ten years: most significantly, London NoBorders and Calais Migrant Solidarity. Within these collectives I havewitnessed many confusing and contradictory questions for current socialmovements, but none quite so challenging as those around safety, com-munity and gendered vulnerabilities—the latter a problem that is oftenmade apparent in incidents of sexual and interpersonal violence.

I have been affiliated with these and similar activist groups both be-fore and in the aftermath of the developments in international relationsthat emerged from September 11 and the subsequent ‘war on terror’. Ihave noticed, following numerous postcolonial scholars (Haritaworn etal. 2008; Puar and Rai 2002; Hunt and Rygiel 2006), that state and individ-ual responses to these events are intimately linked to gendered dis-courses of safety (real and perceived), and thus the need for ‘protection’.In this chapter, I will argue that the various formulations of safety andthe creation of ‘safer spaces’, as undertaken by radical groups and pro-jects, sometimes overlap with the policies and practices of national stateentities, by playing into the Prison Industrial Complex, and so in effectundermining the anti-racist principles of the activists.2

I will pose three topics for discussion. The first concerns discoursesaround ‘safety’ in both state-controlled approaches to border security,and within activist communities and their use of ‘safer spaces’ to nego-tiate Otherness. I argue that both definitions of safety can rely on anessentialist migrant subjectivity that creates a level of fear about the Oth-er, unintentionally contributing to the already unstable ‘anti-racist’ trajec-tory of radical communities. The second topic can be posed as a question:if it is a legitimate expectation that people should feel safe and cared for,but that their sense of safety cannot be delivered through tighter bordercontrols,3 what alternative forms of affect—ones that take into accountthe violence of the postcolonial border regime—can be used as organisa-tional tools? Thirdly, if these groups seek to create new world structuresand communities in the shell of the old, what kinds of solidarity can befacilitated by embracing shared vulnerabilities, whilst acknowledging in-dividual histories, contexts and experiences and the ways in which theseare mediated by gender and race? In short, this chapter will explore

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whether negotiating ‘difficult feelings’ can embolden and strengthen mi-grant solidarity networks.

HEY GIRLS, GET OUT OF HERE, IT’S DANGEROUS!SAFETY AND SECURITY AFTER SEPTEMBER 11

The rise of ‘anti-terror’ sentiment has brought about a lurch to the right interms of fascist and nationalist activity at both a grassroots and institu-tional level, as can be seen with the emergence and re-emergence ofgroups like the English Defence League (EDL) and the British NationalParty (BNP), alongside the more ‘respectable’ parties that inhabit a simi-lar political space, such as The UK Independence Party (UKIP) and theincreasingly strong ‘anti-EU’ political blocs within the Tory party itself.These groups and parties ride the waves of generalised projections ofinsecurity and fear that have characterised the post–September 11 era,bolstering a popularity based on the securitisation of borders.

In recent years, the BNP have staged demonstrations in Calais, wherethey hung banners in public streets and roundabouts with messages tomigrants, including ‘Britain’s Full Up’ and ‘Asylum Seekers, don’t un-pack, you’re going home’ (BNP 2009). Drawing on an affective memoryof the ‘good old days’, and by projecting deep-rooted symbols of wartimeBritish patriotism, the BNP have tried to revisit an (imaginary) polity thatexisted before ‘mass-immigration’, promoting the idea that Englandcould return to this condition. The BNP, for example, have pursued thisagenda by recording election broadcasts and interviews with their leaderNick Griffin, standing beside the white cliffs of Dover (BNP 2011).

At this point at least, the BNP is not as extreme as those groups on theU.S.-Mexico Border that adopt neo-vigilantism. Civilian groups like the‘American Border Patrol’ monitor crossing-points often armed with (li-censed) guns, ‘assisting’ the authorities to reinforce a supposedly ‘under-prioritised’ state border security (Doty 2007, 114). Perhaps the most inter-esting element of their vigilante organisation is their determination tostay in favour with border and police officials, appearing less as a protestgroup and more as a network of local volunteers who are just trying tohelp the institutional border workers do their job. In the UK, this type of‘volunteerism’ is the basis for David Cameron’s ‘Big Society’,4 whichrelies upon volunteers stepping in to maintain the security and comfortof citizens by organising activities and services previously run by thestate, the political implications of which are still emerging during thistime of economic crisis.

It is partly through these kinds of grassroots activities that far-rightgroups have impacted upon the discourses of asylum and securitypost–September 11. The English Defence League cleverly co-ordinated‘community clean-up groups’ following the Riots that occurred in the UK

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after the police shot Mark Duggan in 2011. By ‘helping out our locals’, theEDL attempted to use anti-rioter sentiment to turn people against blackand migrant communities in areas across London, claiming that the sys-temic poverty in these communities grew from something inherent inblack and migrant populations and their supposed inability to ‘integrate’(EDL 2011).

Given that the global financial crisis was hitting particularly hard inthese already impoverished areas, the EDL sought to answer the confu-sion about citizenship since September 11 and about who deserved whatfrom the British state. They sought to answer the questions left open byactivists from both the left and the right about whether it is possible tomake communities safe and cohesive (Vaughan-Williams 2007, 64). Theconfusion and fear that accompanies impoverishment in an economiccrisis, along with the use by the state of surveillance as a ‘borderingpractice’ to link citizenship with counter-terrorism initiatives, has re-sulted in what is referred to as the ‘racialization of suspicion’ (Vaughan-Williams 2007, 71). This racialisation of suspicion is not only an estab-lished tactic for states that seek to fortify their borders, but also it seems aphilosophical necessity for the maintenance of immigration controls. Sothe question becomes, how can social movements craft a notion of safetythat does not rely upon gendered and racialised suspicion? What does itmean to make a space ‘safe’?

THIS PLACE, IT’S CRAWLINGWITH IMMIGRANTS!FEELING (IN)SECURE IN THE BORDER TOWN

In my work on the way that safety is conceptualised by migrant solidar-ity groups and the use of safer spaces, a number of problematic andracialised assumptions have arisen that I would like to examine. Besidesthese challenges, when raising the issues that occur within groups, it isimportant to be aware of my personal investment in their existence. I amanxious, therefore, not to reproduce the actions critiqued by indigenousscholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith who, based on the academic work pro-duced out of engagement with indigenous struggle, observed that

At a common sense level research was talked about both in terms of itsabsolute worthlessness to us (indigenous activists) and its absolute use-fulness to those who wielded it as an instrument. It told us thingsalready known, suggested things that would not work, and made ca-reers for people who already had jobs (Tuhiwai-Smith 1999, 3).

Additionally, though an extended discussion lies beyond the scope ofthis chapter, it is only by understanding (or perhaps participating in) thevery real and necessary solidarity work that is undertaken by Calais Mi-grant Solidarity and the No Borders Network, that the context and the

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weight of these critiques can properly be understood. As a result, a differ-ent way of organising may be attained.

Figure 10.1. Migrant suffering from the effects of pepper spray after a dawnraid by police on the Calais migrant camp, July 2014. Source: © Lisa Furness2014.

During the Calais No Border Camp in 2009, an effort was made toengage local people in their fears about what type of place Calais hadbecome since the closure of Sangatte,5 a situation that has left hundredsof migrants sleeping rough around the streets and parks of the town. It isimportant to note that the local response to the influx of homeless mi-grants has been far from uniform. Locals have launched various success-ful projects to encourage integration and even solidarity with migrants,such as the weekly football matches between locals, migrants and soli-darity activists. These have provided an important base to counter misin-formation and fears about changing populations.

At the site of the camp itself, however, local people had a mixture ofconcerns, from fears for the migrants themselves, to pressing for whatthey perceived to be the protection of ‘local’ families, by which theyseemingly meant French families with papers. One claimed that herdaughter was hassled on her way home by the migrant men who hangabout in the park near her school, that local services for the working poorof Calais were being misdirected towards ‘foreigners’ and even that theinflux of Afghan people could lead to terrorist offences at the Ferry Port.She also worried that increased policing and surveillance were indicativeof the existence of threats, the exact nature of which was not passed on tolocal people. She concluded that the situation should be changed byamending French laws, so that places like Coquelles Detention Centrecould hold migrants for longer than the current maximum period of for-ty-eight hours.

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The logic of these discussions was in keeping with a ‘common-sense’discourse that safety is established through the control or removal ofbodies (Jackson and Meiners 2011, 276). Local people articulated this po-sition, telling us that this safety was not only necessary for keeping thepeople of Calais comfortable and relaxed, but was also necessary for thesafety and comfort of the migrants. When safety is raised in this frame-work, it is difficult to communicate the fact that increased levels of incar-ceration and detention have not coincided with decreased levels of crimeor feelings of general security. Further to this, the normalisation of anincreased police presence on the streets in fact leads to the marginalisa-tion of all those whom the mainstream discourse designates as illegiti-mate—from ‘illegal immigrants’ to ‘benefit scroungers’ to ‘drug deal-ers’—ultimately reinforcing the criminalisation of poverty (Jackson andMeiners 2011, 273). This is important as Calais is one of the poorest townsin France (OECD 2013). With youth unemployment higher than any-where else in the country, the scapegoating of the poor has real effects onthe lives and aspirations of most Calaisians. But, as Jackie Wang pointsout, the “invocation of personal security and safety presses our affectiveregisters and thus can be manipulated to justify everything from racialprofiling to war” (Wang 2012, 161). If this is the case, what then is a usefulanti-racist formulation of safety?

In the first place, feeling ‘safe’ is based on a sense of protection fromharm or risk, but is also indicated by an absence of particular emotionalresponses such as anger, disgust, pain, shame, pity and fear (Jackson andMeiners 2011, 276). These ‘negative emotions’ are often projected ontomarginalised bodies, those we might call ‘Others’. It makes it difficult tocall upon a positive notion of safety when public space is constructed asdangerous. So, for instance, increased policing and surveillance in Calaisdoes not make people feel safer, because swarms of police make peoplemore, not less, worried and suspicious. Moreover, the locations wherethe surveillance is likely to be most dense, and which are thus thought tobe the most dangerous, are places that lie beyond direct public access andknowledge. Wang (2012) invokes urban ghettoes, prisons and NativeAmerican Reservations as examples of such sites, but we could just aseasily add the migrant ‘jungles’ of Calais to this list. Besides the one-dimensional representation of these places as ‘zones of abject vulnerabil-ity’, criminality and danger, these sites are featured in the media as placesto be feared and avoided at all costs (Wang 2012, 155).

WE ARE ALSO IMMIGRANTS:SAFETY IN THE ‘COMMUNITY’ AS VIOLENT TERRAIN

For solidarity activists, proposals designed to make projects and commu-nities generally ‘safer’ for participants and Others are a high priority.

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There have been various attempts to foster an activist culture that doesnot re-inscribe the structural and social norms of racism, sexism, homo-phobia, transphobia, ableism and so on, that make marginalised peoplefeel unsafe in society as it is currently configured. Organisations such asINCITE!6 seek to establish safety in the broader community by creatingalternative approaches to the criminal justice system’s so-called ‘rehabili-tation programmes’ and ‘community sentencing’. At this stage, it wouldbe useful to outline some transformative/restorative approaches to safety,before exploring the possibilities of orienting our praxis around a solidar-ity based on shared, differentiated and overlapping experiences of vio-lence, anger, risk and vulnerability.

In trying to find a vehicle for the move towards ‘safer communities’,activist scenes and organisations have yielded a cacophony of proposi-tions, from those that seek to reform state structures, to those that advo-cate a ‘violent’ reconfiguration of safety as it is commonly understood.According to some reformers, safety can be improved for minority com-munities by successfully campaigning to increase the accessibility andavailability of state-provided services (Blakey 2005). Some anti-racist or-ganisations prioritise educative community campaigns, featuring a re-spectable spokesperson that can represent the voice of the Others whilststill being able to relate to the mainstream (this method is critiqued inWang 2012). In order to think through ways in which migrant solidarityactivists can create fruitful organising environments, the projects that willbe mentioned here include that of Community activists within the groupINCITE! (particularly their methods of using grassroots dialogue), andthe argument put forward by critical race theorists Leonardo and Porter(2010). The latter argue that, for people of colour, ‘safety’ under moderncapitalist relations is a form of violence itself and needs to be met with adialectical violence, where individuals undertake a rapid revisiting of theways in which colonial thinking and white supremacy have permeatedevery area of life.

INCITE! argues for safer communities through participation in trans-formative justice programmes and through communication across com-munities, in order to facilitate greater accountability when others feelunsafe. They contend that, for safety and solidarity to merge in praxis,individuals and communities need to attempt to make feelings of vulner-ability manageable. This means that, rather than seeking a straightfor-ward resolution of an issue, collectives should attempt to reframe theproblem through “relationships of mutual recognition and developingour capacity to live with uncertainty” (INCITE! 2013).

In the case of Calais, this could translate into the opening of a dialoguebetween the migrants (who are suffering routine attacks by police andborder officials) and the locals (who are being barraged by informationthat indicates that providing any assistance or solidarity to migrants willencourage theft, violence and people trafficking). Following the INCITE!

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model, activists and community members could create a communicationbased on values of “safety, respect, self-determination, and nurturing aculture of collective responsibility, connection, and liberation” (INCITE!2013). INCITE! argues that this type of dialogue is a form of communityaccountability, which is not just a reaction to someone doing somethingthat makes another person feel unsafe, but is also proactive, ongoing andnegotiated among everyone in the community. This better prepares com-munities to address moments of contention and dispute, if and whenthey occur.

The question then becomes whether or not it is possible to create theseforums or spaces where people can come together and participate mean-ingfully, despite language barriers, precarious immigration status anddifferentiated access to information and basic needs, such as housing andfood. Leonardo and Porter would argue that open community discussioncould not be made safe for the people of colour because this discussionexists as part of a hegemonic system of violence against marginalisedpeople. From this perspective, safety discourses on race are a veiled formof violence, and countering this will require a “humanizing form of vio-lence” to expose contradictions in the discourse of safety (Leonardo andPorter 2010, 140). The authors, following the writings of Frantz Fanon(1967), do not argue for violence in the sense of bloodshed, or in the formof physical or repressive violence, but rather as

a humanizing form of violence (as) a pedagogy and politics of disrup-tion that shifts the regime of knowledge about what is ultimately pos-sible as well as desirable as a racial arrangement. It is not violent in theusual and commonsensical sense of promoting war, injury, or coercion(Leonardo and Porter 2010, 140).

The argument put forward by Leonardo and Porter is that violence isthe basis upon which any dialogue or discussion about safety is prem-ised, and therefore a dialectical form of violence with the power to “de-stroy, create and unify” is necessary (Fanon, in Leonardo and Porter 2010,139). They see this as the way to move through the ‘racialization of safety’discourse, though one could argue that this type of dialogue could onlytake place in specified environments where the participants agree to ap-proach all topics of discussion with a personal commitment to braveryand an awareness of ‘differently distributed risk’. This means that somegroups (made up of white people) may ‘receive’ anger in the process oflistening openly. Within activist camps and activities in recent times,there have been attempts to provide space for these discussions in ‘auton-omous zones’ known as ‘safer spaces’.

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WE’VE COMEHERE TO EATWITH THEM:THE QUESTION OF SAFER SPACES IN POSTCOLONIAL TIMES

In recent years, the spaces for dialogue and collective action proposed byactivist groups have relied upon the supposed power of announcing aspace as safe, and then hoping that people will either self-regulate or beprepared to be ‘called out’ in case any oppressive behaviour occurs with-in it. Activist organisations—not only migrant solidarity projects but alsocoordinated spaces such as those used by the Occupy movement—havemobilised what are known as ‘safer spaces’ policies7 to deal with thoseactivities or attitudes perceived as oppressive or violent that occur withinthe core locations of the camps or organisations concerned. Chronologi-cally, these policies emerged alongside particular activist projects focus-sing on models of transformative/restorative/community ‘justice’, usedby radical individuals to deal with issues of sexism, racism, homophobia,transphobia or even assault that occur in these communities and spaces(CARA 2003; INCITE! 2013). Such approaches are used as an alternativeto calling in the police or other state agencies. The ‘safer spaces’ policyand recent activist projects concerning community justice come partlyfrom an acknowledgement that the legal systems in mainstream societycannot regulate sexual (Serisier 2013) or other sets of personal relations(consensual or non-consensual) in a way that is either fair or adequate.

Postcolonial scholars have contested the neutrality of any space giventhe ongoing legacies of colonialism (DiAngelo and Sensoy 2014; Leonar-do and Porter 2010; Puar and Rai 2002). Consequently, any place whereactivists, migrants and local Calaisians8 might meet is drenched withmeaning and history. It makes sense, therefore, to look at the ‘operation’of space as an entity. Weems defines space as “material and symbolicnetworks of bodies in contact with particular boundaries that may ormay not be ‘visible’ in the current geography of placement” (Weems2010, 562). In other words, while the boundaries of the place itself may beconcrete, such as the place called ‘the office’ where activist, migrants andlocals come together to drink tea, talk and pass the time between jour-neys, the network of contact and control can permeate time, place andspace. Weems argues for a method of “bringing in to view ordinary peo-ple on the move simultaneously framed within contested historical andgeographical contexts as social and spatially situated subjects” (562).

Leonardo and Porter, in a similar fashion, suggest that safer spacescan only refer to “white comfort zones”, which are places that have awell-documented history of violence against people of colour. Theyargue that

it is a point of entry that is characterized by denials, evasions, andfalsehoods. . . . This procedural arrangement has much to recommendit if we want to avoid uprisings and outright violence. But if this is

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what white people think of as ‘safe’, its kernel is already violent topeople of color because a certain irrational rationality is at work (Leo-nardo and Porter 2010, 149).9

The INCITE collective argues that the context of any space wheredialogue takes place is of paramount importance. Community issuesaround safety can only be resolved through dialogue if participants re-spect the fact that all people are affective beings within varying contexts,relationships and personal histories. Individuals should try to engagewith one another on the basis of this knowledge. Only then will it bepossible to work with the ‘embeddedness’ and ‘mobility’ of socially andspatially situated subjects (Weems 2010, 562). In other words, appeals to‘safer space’ must negotiate “historical material and symbolic linkages . . .with heteronormative, racialised and nationalist discontinuities and slip-pages within totalising narratives” (562). Additionally, as part of the needto confront issues collectively, people should understand that they them-selves are responsible for addressing the harms that they witness, be-cause witnesses are not innocent and all people have a responsibility torespond to the Other’s pain (INCITE! 2013). This allows activists collabo-rating with INCITE! to work from a situated analysis of power whilstpursuing safety as an ongoing project, rather than working towards thecreation of a mythical space that is free from negative values.

YOU GETWHAT YOUDESERVE:FACING OPPRESSIVE ATTITUDES AFTER ‘SAFER’ SPACES

Critiques of safer spaces are more and more prevalent among those acti-vists and academics arguing for a distancing from the notion of ‘safety’,which is seen as an affect that is no longer politically potent (DiAngeloand Sensoy 2014). Anti-racist and solidarity activists are instead fightingfor ‘Braver Spaces’ (Self 2010; Tran Myhre 2013), where anger or newconfigurations with pedagogic violence can occur (Leonardo and Porter2013). These are spaces for conceptualizing shared, though differentlyembodied, vulnerabilities (Cohn 2014; Gilson 2011), spaces that make itpossible to experience and collectively deconstruct feelings of anxiety(Institute for Precarious Consciousness 2014), and spaces that embracethe politics and emotions associated with risk (Hanhardt 2013; hooks1990).

At this point, an example of the kind of problematic statement thatoccurred in my fieldwork may illustrate how an incident can be dealtwith through particular ‘affective’ organising strategies, and how theseapproaches could lead to a more comprehensive and liberating outcomefor transnational migrant solidarity projects facing questions of ‘safety’.Certain comments, that encompass ideas of safety, sexism and culturalessentialism, emerged at one point during my fieldwork, when one of the

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white female activists from Calais Migrant Solidarity demonstrated pub-lically that she had started a sexual/romantic relationship with an Afghanmigrant. The couple were spotted kissing and engaging in a lingeringembrace whilst waiting in the queue at the food distribution centre. Itwas reported to me by another activist:

That sort of PDA [Public Display of Affection] will make them [theother migrants] think that we are all like that, free and easy and youknow, sexually available. . . . It’s irresponsible of her really. . . . When Iwas doing solidarity work in Palestine we weren’t allowed to haverelationships like that with Palestinians, no way (Jenna10 2012).

In my opinion, this statement resembles the ‘getting what one de-serves’ approach to sexual violence where women and their behaviourmakes them responsible for rape and assault, reinforcing the notion ofprotecting ‘our’ women from ‘their’ men, and harking back to the Orien-talist trope that migrant men cannot control their urges (Bhabha 2004Fanon 1967; Said 1978). It also appears to reinforce the liberal/neoliberalnotion that individuals are and should be responsible for their own safe-ty.

Ideally, this kind of comment would be challenged by other CalaisMigrant Solidarity activists as part of their implementation of the ‘SaferSpaces Policy’ (found in literature stacked in a pile at the Calais MigrantSolidarity office, along with various pamphlets on ‘trauma support’). Inpractice, as one of my respondents noted, “I think people see those sortsof policies as just the wall paper you get in squats, no one really readsthem anymore as far as I can tell” (Kavita 2013).

It is important to appreciate the weight of Jenna’s comment (seeabove) as it contributes to a culture of increased criminalisation of mi-grant men, and of blame and sexism towards women who experienceassault (CARA 2003; Pendleton and Serisier 2009; Words To Fire 2013). Inthis situation, Leonardo and Porter (2010) would argue that a safe spacecould not be created to discuss or reflect upon the power dynamics inrelationships between migrants and activists when such a violent com-ment had been made. For this reason, the last section of this chapter willprovide an analysis of activist spaces that do not use ‘safety’ as a goal intheir fight to challenge racism and sexism in migrant solidarity organisa-tions.

The Braver Spaces Policy is one that is supposed to encourage con-structive debate, show a willingness to engage with difficult emotionsand take an active step away from believing that a space that is safe is onethat operates without disagreement. In a study that examined the ‘BraveSpace’ used by an LGBT student group at an American University, thispolicy is described as:

an environment in which participants are encouraged to engage in dif-ficult conversations about power, privilege, oppression, and the inter-

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sections and complications associated with multiple identifications. . . .The discursive shift from safe to brave and the concretization of theconcept, contoured and shaped the center space as an honest, messy,complex space in which people can ‘learn’, ‘make mistakes’ and ‘for-give’ (Self 2010).

The author describes the shift from a safe space to a brave space, as amovement away from conversations on the ‘surface’, where it was impor-tant not to upset anyone, to a more fluid one where ‘hot topics’ could bediscussed whilst observing “guidelines and intentionality”. One of theguidelines implored students (in this case) to notice homo-normativewhiteness and how this operated to make some people feel more com-fortable than others (Self 2010).

The possibility of Jenna (see above) being invited to a discussion in abraver space to think through her comment and the fears and concerns ofother people, could well be a more productive measure than simply ask-ing her to re-read the Safer Spaces policy, or accusing her of using lan-guage that makes women feel unsafe or migrants feel that they are thetargets of racial discrimination. By interrupting the gendered and racial-ised norms of her assertion, the collective could create a “transformativeor transgressive space that encourages conversation and community”,rather than the gendered, classed, and racialised norms of dominantspaces (Self 2010).

With regard to spaces that encourage anger, DiAngelo and Sensoy(2014) describe a session they organised to facilitate discussion about raceand how some white people, when accused of racism, became defensiveand directed their anger towards the people of colour in the room. Theauthors suggest that a greater degree of bravery should be demanded ofparticipants, and that the wider context of the discussion should be madeclear:

Thus the history of extensive, brutal, and explicit physical violenceperpetrated by Whites against people of Color—slavery, lynching,whipping, genocide, internment, forced sterilization, and medical ex-perimentation to mention a few—as well as its ideological rationaliza-tions, are trivialized through White claims of a lack of safety when inthe rare situation of merely talking about race with people of Color(DiAngelo and Sensoy 2014, 11).

The discussions about race that were being facilitated did result inpeople feeling angry, but as Leonardo and Porter point out, anger, hostil-ity and pain are necessary for both white people and people of colour inthese spaces in order to engage in a process that is “creative enough toestablish new forms of social existence, where both parties are trans-formed” (Leonardo and Porter 2010, 149). Again, be it a Braver Space oranother space organised to facilitate discussions about racism, the point

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is that Jenna should have had the opportunity to express her point ofview within a space that would make her and others feel uneasy.

Moving from the strong emotion that is anger to a more philosophicalframework, I next want to examine the claim that collective politics be-gins from an acknowledgement that we all occupy a shared state of vul-nerability. George Shulman suggests that political theory begins with asense of danger—in emotions of fear or dread, in perceptions of impend-ing or potential harm, in experiences of vulnerability or injury (Shulman2011, 227). This leads us to seeing vulnerability as a problem to be solved,rather than a philosophy of human-ness (Cohn 2014). When seen thisway, Gilson calls vulnerability a “condition of openness, openness tobeing affected and affecting in turn” (Gilson 2011, 52). Similarly, JudithButler tries to see universal human vulnerability not as a problem, butrather as a potential basis for community and a nonviolent ethics. Bytaking into account social and structural factors, it becomes clear thatsome people are made more vulnerable than others and their lives arealso “less grievable” (Butler 2004). The particular vulnerabilities of mi-grants, women, local Calaisians and other activists, when seen as a com-mon place to begin the process of anti-racist politics, offer hope of achiev-ing better collective processes and spaces.

In a recent article about anxiety and the way it impedes social move-ments, there was a call for the construction of something referred to as a‘disalienated space’. The point of this type of space is not simply to re-count experiences in the manner of a self-help group, but to “transformand restructure [experiences] through their theorisation” (Institute forPrecarious Consciousness 2014). This could be done by finding patternsin experiences which reflect a liberatory theory, encouraging participantsto see personal problems and small injustices as symptoms of widerstructural problems. Gaining this understanding may in turn relievepsychological pressures, and make it easier to respond with purposefulanger instead of depression or anxiety. It is argued that this type of spaceshould not simply be a way of sustaining existing activities but, instead, aspace for reconstructing a radical perspective about the anxieties experi-enced by those involved in political organising. Finally, in an interviewwith bell hooks, she encourages activists to take risk as a political start-ing-point. She argues that “real safety is your willingness to not run awayfrom yourself”. She urges us “to risk, to embrace rebellion, disruption,and chaos as a beloved site for transformation” (Chödrön and hooks1997).

CONCLUSIONS

The lorry driver who insisted that ‘safety’ could be achieved by avoidingOthers, perhaps by living separately, tightening up the borders and

Bordering on Reproducing the State 185

warning women who venture out after dark, raises the questions whodecides what is safe and for whom, and what is being decided for others,on their behalf, without their consent?

This chapter has explored the serious questions facing transnationalmigrant solidarity groups: can we make spaces for organisation and dis-sent that confront power at both a structural and personal level? Dis-courses and discussions around safety and security have featured inmainstream political and media outlets in the UK and Calais in the after-math of September 11, particularly since the demolition of the camps inMay 2014, and these have shaped the landscape on which migrant soli-darity groups are currently operating. By making the link between theclimate of racialised suspicion and the desire for ‘safety’ at both a grass-roots and institutional level, some of the issues facing the migrants, localpeople and activists in Calais have been mapped.

By examining some of the models offered by transformative justicenetworks, and also by other activist projects, a new set of affective organ-ising strategies were offered as a place to begin addressing the issues ofgendered and racialised oppression that take place in activist networks.Working from these strategies, activists can begin to work on the types ofspaces that take into account the context and experiences of those whomake up our networks. This is just the beginning. We must continue tobuild alternative ideas about community, justice, vulnerability and safe-ty, as these are essential to a project that works for a better world, a callthat needs to be taken more seriously by activists at a grassroots level,regardless of how uncomfortable it may be.

NOTES

1. For more details, please see the Calais Migrant Solidarity website at http://calaismigrantsolidarity.wordpress.com/2014/05/28/camp-evictions-met-with-occupations-and-resistance/.

2. Many of the social and political issues that arose in the global north after thebeginning of the ‘war on terror’ have been exacerbated by the economic crash of 2008/09 and the subsequent search for scapegoats.

3. Through what Jackson and Meiners call the “regulation or removal of Others”(Jackson andMeiners 2011, 276).

4. ‘Big Society’ is British Prime Minister David Cameron’s answer to ensuring a‘smaller’ (read: neoliberal) state. The idea is that people will volunteer to run servicesthat they believe are worthwhile, allowing the public purse to shrink, taxes to belowered and ‘market efficiency’ to decide which public services continue to run.

5. Since February 2004, the British and French governments have agreed to a recip-rocal exchange of border control points, explicitly to curb ‘illegal immigration’. In thelead up to this agreement, there was a decision to close the Sangatte Centre, which wasa Red Cross humanitarian shelter in Calais that provided meals and a place to sleepfor up to 2000 migrants each night. Its closure responds to claims that people traffick-ers used the space to facilitate their business arrangements (BBC 2007).

6. INCITE! is a U.S.-based “activist organization of radical feminists of color ad-vancing a movement to end violence against women of color and our communities

186 Claire English

through direct action, critical dialogue and grassroots organizing” (INCITE! 2013).Some of their projects include “challenging the non-profitization of antiviolence andother social justice movements, organizing rallies on street harassment . . . organizingmothers on welfare, building and running a grassroots clinic, supporting communitiesto engage in community accountability strategies, and much more” (INCITE! 2013).

7. “A safer space is a supportive, non-threatening environment that encouragesopen-mindedness, respect, a willingness to learn from others, as well as physical andmental safety. It is a space that is critical of the power structures that affect our every-day lives, and where power dynamics, backgrounds, and the effects of our behavioron others are prioritized. It’s a space that strives to respect and understand survivors’specific needs. Everyone who enters a safer space has a responsibility to uphold thevalues of the space” (Coalition for Safer Spaces 2010).

8. It is important to note that these are not three distinct categories. Someone couldidentify as all three (‘a local migrant activist’), or even engage with the space assomeone who identifies with none of these labels.

9. Leonardo and Porter argue for the use of a Fanonian concept of Safety to under-stand how ‘safer spaces’ operate. They suggest that the reason why safe-space discus-sions “partly break down in practice, if not at least in theory, is that they assume that,by virtue of formal and procedural guidelines, safety has been designated for bothwhite people and people of colour. However, the term ‘safety’ acts as a misnomerbecause it often means that white individuals can be made to feel safe (even thoughpeople of colour cannot). Thus, a space of safety is circumvented, and instead a spaceof oppressive colour-blindness is established. It is a managed health-care version ofanti-racism, an insurance against ‘looking racist’” (Leonardo and Porter 2010, 147).10. All names have been changed to protect the identity of my interviewees.

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