Cross-reading: closeness in a different place?
The FMSH is pleased to welcome ies publishing for an evening presentation and discussion of two books published in the Le geste social collection.
This comparative reading is based on two long-term ethnographic studies. The first, conducted by Hélène Mazin in the Roya Valley, examines the journeys of people in exile – mainly Eritreans and Sudanese – who are accompanied by support networks in their attempts to cross the French border. The second, conducted by Camille Salgues in the changing outskirts of the megalopolis of Shanghai, focuses on the daily lives of children of internal migrants.
By bringing together these fields of transit and displacement, the discussion will highlight experiences of hospitality, conviviality and close relationships, as well as the involvement of the ethnographer in these situations. These thematic and methodological issues will form the basis of this meeting.
The meeting will be moderated by Marc Breviglieri.
Les exilés de la Roya
Isn't the so-called migration crisis, at its core, a crisis of reception?
At the end of 2015, the re-establishment of border controls between France and Italy led a large number of exiles, mainly from Eritrea and Sudan, to take the Roya Valley trails to enter French territory. Along the mountain roads, local residents encountered disoriented and exhausted exiles. Spontaneously, some residents decided to take them into their homes. However, these acts of activism were closely monitored by the authorities in a context where the Roya Valley had become a focal point in the fight against immigration
Une après-midi à Shanghai
"The investigation lasted three years, not “an afternoon”, but I wanted the title to convey something of the temporality of those long moments spent hanging out with the children. And, as you will have understood, this is not the Shanghai we usually see; this is not an afternoon of shopping on the Bund. Rather, it is the Shanghai of Lu Xun's “weeds”, the Shanghai of dilapidated housing between two areas undergoing renovation, where the children I was researching lived, having come from the Chinese countryside to accompany their parents in search of work. It is here that we follow the ordinary thread of these small lives, through the encounters and ethnographic locations that shape the course of the investigation and the book. (...) The desire to (re)open the discussion on childhood in the social sciences is carefully interwoven into these wanderings, like a book within a book, the thread of which can be followed through the system of subheadings. Each chapter thus provides an opportunity to pause at a key moment in what could be a reflection on childhood or, rather, on the anthropological question of age, approached from the perspective of childhood.
Hélène Mazin is a social worker, social work trainer and doctor of sociology (Lumière Lyon 2 University). She is affiliated with the Max Weber Centre (Lyon-Saint-Étienne) and conducts research based on her practical experience, using ethnography. She addresses themes that question the experience of exile, the helping relationship and civic engagement. She mainly teaches social work students.
Camille Salgues, a former student of the École Normale Supérieure, obtained his PhD in sociology from the Interdisciplinary Research Institute on Social Issues (EHESS). He then spent several years as a postdoctoral researcher at Chinese universities and Sciences Po Paris. He is currently a researcher at the CEFC in Hong Kong, editor-in-chief of the journal China Perspectives, and associate researcher in the Department of Languages at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China in Chengdu.
Marc Breviglieri, who will be hosting the meeting, is an associated professor at the HETS-HES-SO Genève.
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