Refugees and the Politics of the Participation in the Calais Jungle and Beyond - Dr Aura Lounasmaa

On Monday September 17, 2018, The American University of Paris and The George and Irina Schaeffer Center for the Study of Genocide, Human Rights, and Conflict Prevention welcomed its first speaker of the academic year to our campus. Dr Aura Lounasmaa of the University of East London drew a large crowd of students, faculty, and other members of the AUP community for an evening entitled “Refugees and the Politics of the Participation in the Calais Jungle and Beyond.” Dr. Lounasmaa spoke about her experience as a member of the teaching staff on the award-winning Life Stories in the Jungle short course in the Calais refugee camp and read extracts from the book 'Voices from the Jungle,' a book co-authored by 22 students and residents of the Calais Jungle. Dr Lounasmaa was joined by authors of “Voices from the Jungle,” and refugee activists from France. After Dr. Lounasmaa opened the evening with her presentation, it turned into a panel discussion.The speakers included:

• Riaz Ahmad, Voices author and refugee activist
• Maitre Elodie Journeau, Avocate au Barreau de Paris
• Judith Aquien, Déléguée générale, Action Emploi Réfugiés

This event served as a forum for discussion of both the course, which considers four ways in which the politics in the camp emerged: (1) the use of ‘rights’ language in constituting the camp residents as political citizens (2) coalitions between residents and volunteers as a political practice (3) the politics of commons and deliberative processes; and (4) associative spaces linked to political practices within the camp. In addition, the event allowed for a discussion of some of the larger implications of the Calais Jungle after its dissolution such as the concept of citizenship in the European context, problematize assumptions of what constitutes European politics, and politics of bordering. The audience had the opportunity to participate in a question and answer session with the speakers as well as having the opportunity for individual discussions with the guests during a cocktail reception following the talk.

Dr Aura Lounasmaa

Dr Aura Lounasmaa is a lecturer in the University of East London School of Social Sciences, a research fellow at the Centre for Narrative Research and part of a team of academics teaching an accredited university short course ‘Life Stories in the Jungle’ in the Calais refugee camp in France. Aura completed her PhD in the Global Women’s Studies Centre at the National University of Ireland, Galway, in 2014, funded by the IRCHSS. Her research focuses on women’s political activism in Morocco.

The George and Irina Schaeffer Center for the Study of Genocide, Human Rights, and Conflict Prevention

The George and Irina Schaeffer Center for the Study of Genocide, Human Rights, and Conflict Prevention promotes innovative research, curricula, and pedagogies, in the hopes of reaching a deeper understanding of the causes and consequences of genocide and mass violence.

The American University of Paris is the first in France to house the USC Shoah Foundation’s complete Visual History Archive, which contains over 53,000 testimonies from survivors and witnesses of the Shoah and the Armenian, Rwandan, and Nanjing genocides, representing 62 countries and 39 languages. The university is making this important resource available to researchers, teachers and students, in their investigation and dissemination of new insights into the origins and aftereffects of collective hatred, fundamentalist ideologies, discrimination, and mass violence, in historical, social, and individual memory.