In Oise, on the edge of a forest

18The centre opened in Oise in May 2016 - an hour from Paris –to receive asylum seekers in the outsized premises of the Afpa (National Agency for Adult Vocational Training). Situated in the middle of fields and small woods several kilometres away from the town and closed off by a barrier with an intercom, the road leading to the accommodation site runs for more than a kilometre alongside testing sites for training exercises (masonry, formwork, various open-air workshops related to the building trades), then deep in the woods there are small three-storey buildings, which serve as both classrooms and accommodation for the trainees, followed by a canteen where lunch is provided for both trainees and exiles. This is the countryside: at the back, a bocage of mature trees, to the side, fields as far as the eye can see, and in front, a long view over the green valley of Oise. Peace and quiet is guaranteed.

19The exiles occupy the penultimate two-storey building, before expanses of arable land take over. Each person has an individual room with a small wardrobe. The bathroom and toilets are shared, and they are clean, according to Ahmed, a resident of the centre who experienced sheltering in a tent in Paris and in an emergency accommodation in a disused hospital. The final building contains offices for the Afpa trainers and social workers, as well as a common room which can be accessed by the migrants, with a television, a coffee machine, four computers and a kettle.

20In the morning, there is hardly anyone outside, neither young trainees nor exiles, which gives the impression of a ghost town in the middle of nowhere. And exiles do not get a much clearer picture from the map of France hanging on the wall in the common room, even with the addition by social workers of a small hand drawn cross just above Paris and the words “Vous êtes ici. You are here.”

21Because many of them say that they have ended up in a forgotten place, here in Oise or elsewhere. From the outset, when people arrive, they do not have a big smile on their face; they travelled through two or three kilometres of fields wondering where they had landed. Then it is explained to them that they are not allowed to prepare food in their room. But soon the first question is raised: “Where’s the town? Where’s the train?”. Their first concern is how to get out of here. “It takes them a while to get used to it, but after a week or two they are quite happy. They say it’s quiet, there’s space, they can sit on the grass”, concludes a social worker. This impression comes up very often in discussions. There is no longer any need to hide in the crowd, no fear to overcome at every crossroads, no anxiety in the face of danger: the countryside does not present any risks except that of getting lost without a compass. As Mohammed and Ali, residents of the centre, explain, here they no longer encounter “fights”. Nor do they have to find a quiet place for two or three people to sleep every night. Above all, they are no longer subject to police checks several times a day in Paris. Each time, they were required to show their asylum application receipt, wait for the officers to check it, long minutes of waiting and anguish, never sure that all was in order, that they had a right to be there, in the street, to take the metro. Living without police provides respite.

22It represents a halt to migrants’ perpetual mobility, which consumes all their energy, as Laacher emphasises (2007: 90). At last, a break in the frantic race. Calmness and anxiety: the search for resources stops here in the fields, because at least the “basic essentials for living” are provided. In this accommodation they find a little stability, meals are guaranteed, but what next? The anguish returns. They have to walk for nearly an hour to get to the station and the shops in the nearby small town. Many have bought a second-hand bicycle to get to the station to go to Paris, to attend their administrative appointments (residence permit, asylum application, legal advice) or to visit someone they know. One day when we were there, a smartly dressed young man left on his bike after lunch, heading for the local youth centre. Another was feverish, and the social worker made an appointment for him to see a doctor the next day. He would have to travel by foot or by bike.

23After a few weeks, two months at most, boredom sets in, and there are often people missing from the roll call. On the Excel spreadsheet in the centre’s active file, two words appear against certain names: “VOLUNTARY DEPARTURE”. Since May 2016, there have been “twenty-seven voluntary departures”, a professional tells us, using the category established by institutions in charge of asylum. What is most striking - and we will see this elsewhere – is how obvious this category is to social workers and the situations that it covers. People who have left overnight, leaving their belongings behind. “To go where? Do you have any news? Why do they leave? Is twenty-seven people a large number?” There are no answers to these questions. The term “voluntary departure” indicates that the person could no longer stand this accommodation-confinement and the endless waiting with no prospects. It means returning to Paris, to look for other resources, other links with their community of language and interest. Back to square one for these young men who have often spent several months in the capital, roaming the streets, alone or in a small group, generally without a precise goal other than an opportunity to earn a few cents, but who had the feeling of being able to circulate and to manage their time. Deciding to move again is not to flee, it is to search for new resources and temporarily extinguish the wait. We learn from this centre on the edge of a forest in Oise that the respite provided by the long-awaited accommodation solution and the tranquillity of the place is short-lived. Remoteness reignites the forced mobility of the exiles.

Impossible rounds of administrative desks

24One of the practical issues that exiles have to resolve in their very first days in accommodation: how to keep track of their file, i.e., the asylum application, and more broadly, of all the assistance from which they can benefit and the obligations with which they must comply (food aid and financial assistance, health, enrolment in French language courses for example)? Exiles are allocated a place by the administrative authorities in a CAO, an emergency accommodation centre, emergency accommodation for asylum seekers or a low-cost hotel. Then the rounds of administrative desks begin, a daily activity that is essential to “keep one’s case file alive”: appointments at the OFII, the prefecture, with a specific social service, to collect correspondence from the domiciliation association, a food parcel from Restos du cœur, [7] clothes from Secours populaire, [8] unsold goods at the end of the market, etc.

25All of these visits necessitate many hours of travel, across the territory because the various services are scattered: a person may be accommodated in one town, but depend on food aid located in another town several kilometres away, or even be domiciled at an association situated in another department, and trips to the cities are frequent to get treatment and to find resources because that is where the exiles made their first contacts on their arrival to France. In addition, the rotation of accommodation multiplies the number of locations of administrative offices. The case of a young exile who applied for asylum in Picardy without being offered accommodation and is domiciled at an association in Amiens provides an illustration. He was hosted for some time by relatives in Amiens before they asked him to leave. After a few days on the street, he joined friends in Paris and slept in the kitchen of a migrant workers’ centre. He has to travel regularly to Amiens by train without funding to check his correspondence. Undertaking a return trip between Paris and Amiens to get one’s mail is unheard of! Because there is no question of missing a possible appointment! Under these conditions, time becomes a rubber band. It can extend and stretch over a whole day with an envelope at the end of the journey.

26Of course, there is a gender divide in the use of time. It is not the same for each. In a hotel providing accommodation to migrants in Oise, the men go out into town all day to look for work (or go about their business) while the women go to the administrative desks: the CCAS (municipal social action centre) twice a week to pick up correspondence, the queue is long, it takes a full day. A volunteer from Secours Catholique sometimes acts as go-between. “No mail!” “Thank you.” They are waiting for a decision from the prefecture, failing that, they go back with a fine from the SNCF. [9] Many men undertake undocumented labour every other week, in the building trade and at the end of construction works when the site needs to be cleaned up. Meanwhile women are busy collecting tinned food at all possible points in Pont-Sainte-Maxence, Senlis and Creil. Red Cross, charity shop, prefecture, CCAS, lawyer, this chain of institutions needs to be kept in mind.

27Accounts provided by exiles describe the vulnerabilities caused by this geographical isolation, the “remoteness” of accommodation: they find themselves far away from administrative services, shops, doctors, and those with whom they had created ties. As we have seen, young and healthy men who have the possibility of buying and riding a bicycle are in a better position to mitigate these vulnerabilities. The discounted Navigo travel pass [10] and smartphones also help to keep in touch with loved ones and to limit the effects of remoteness. [11] Sometimes the manager of a hotel reserved for accommodation of exiles informally provides transportation by car: every morning, he takes four women to the neighbouring town where there is a train station or to do the shopping. He makes up for the lack of public transport, depending on the individual migrant. These vulnerabilities are sometimes reflected in the accounts to the point of destitution, as in the case of a woman housed in a dilapidated hotel on the edge of a forest in Oise, seven kilometres away from the first food shop, who had to wait for food supplies to be delivered by an association. This situation is not uncommon. There was also the case of several young men who were taken by bus to a CAO located in a business park in Île-de-France on a Friday evening, and who remained without food for three days.

28The contrast between a hostel or a CAO enclosed in a forest and a flat in the city is striking. The situations trigger opposite processes. It is obvious that sociability and urbanity go together. A family’s account of their settlement in a flat located in council housing describes their settlement in the city. To begin with, the young couple visit various associations to get food or toys for the children, there is a charity present in the building, the neighbours are very attentive. These young people go to church. This is an opportunity to engage in exchanges in French. Since they attend the PMI (maternal and child protection centre), they come across a poster on enrolment of children in pre-school from the age of two. They register their child. Thus, they pass through various places, shopping centres, church, administrative desks, all ways of getting used to the wait and their new living environment, even though they know that it is only temporary.

Simple strategies to cope with the wait

29Does this mean that locating accommodation in city centres would in and of itself significantly improve the daily lives of exiles? Nothing is less certain. Indeed, for all of them, irrespective of geographical location and the availability of transport, the fragmentation of their time and space increases the vulnerability of the exiles. Understanding the daily lives of the exiles means deciphering the relationships between space (the location and material conditions of accommodation, the breadth of the round of administrative desks across the territory) and time (constraints of integration, training with prospects, paid work). As Fogel (2015) points out, analysis must include “migratory temporalities”, “time as an undocumented migrant” which causes many disruptions, sudden moves from one place of accommodation to another, abrupt reversals from one administrative decision to another. Space and time are violently disembodied and subject to the fundamental wait for rights. It is as if time is turned upside down by these waves of displacement. Temporalities are constantly undone by this wait for rights.

30How to wait when there is no reference point? How can waiting accentuate a situation of vulnerability? According to Kobelinsky (2014: 36-37), “alienation from time is not an objective of asylum or reception policy. Rather, it is an effect of bureaucracies. An effect which, in turn, has consequences on the lives of asylum seekers who are housed in a space that, after an initial period of rest and protection, confines and sets them aside, in a temporary situation that lasts.” [12]

31Waiting is that insecure time when asylum seekers have no control over their future and hardly any control over space: they are in the grip of worries. Waiting is everywhere that what they are looking for is not. It is the empire of impossibility. The only horizon is the accommodation centre.

32During a group meeting with exiles of different ages and in different situations at the Compiègne CADA (reception centre for asylum seekers), we realised that very few of them really knew the city. They had been there for several months, but they had not been able to explore it. “Stuck”, “too many worries”, they told us. Their outings were limited to compulsory administrative appointments. They only knew the associations and services they had to access. Although the CADA is located ten minutes’ walk away from the centre and in a town where buses are free, these families did not venture further. This is a form of vulnerability caused by waiting: space shrinks and can be scary. Despite the favourable geographical location, the grip of worries remains too strong.

33The exiles’ daily lives are marked by discontinuity, this impossible round of administrative desks and long waiting hours. Under the veranda of the hostel reserved for exiles in Oise, in a room at the CADA, or in the common room of the accommodation centre, every afternoon, they are used to waiting for time to pass. Here, time is not money. They have plenty of time to wait. Waiting. Having plenty of time. When one always has plenty of time, it is because one does not have the means to convert it into money. Time is then devalued, it is worthless. Poverty is defined in this way: the clock is stuck at the same time. There is no point in chasing time, there is nothing to be gained.

34What are the tips developed by exiles to endure the waiting period and get back on their feet step by step?

35A young Tibetan woman tries “not to sleep all day.” She does not go out into the city, but only into the courtyard of the CADA, which incidentally is not really a courtyard because it is a car park. Several CADAs advise asylum seekers - especially young men with families - to do voluntary work in town, to “keep me busy,” says a young Albanian man, a bricklayer by trade, “to do something, at least two days a week.”

36For others, coping with the wait means establishing their own status within the residential centre. Tania, a young Albanian woman, has been living in a hostel in Oise for two years. On our first visit, she showed us around: “That’s the kitchen,” she said, pointing at a small wooden garden chalet, thirty square metres, with glass doors, on the lawn adjoining the hostel. Two big gas cookers, four “cooking pots.” It was February and the weather was cold. “Cooking in the rooms is forbidden,” she stressed. The manager built this chalet for sixty-two families. She introduced herself as the representative of the site manager in his absence. Was this really the case? No, but Tania was the most senior person in the hostel, she knew all the technical procedures in the building, for example, washing machine, taps, water outlet, closing time, etc. She arrived in France in 2012. This was her sixth year in the department, so she was embracing the role of leader. She had connections with the Secours Catholique, [13] 115, [14] Albanian families, got on well with African women, spoke English, and possessed tact to address tensions.

37Tania applied for asylum. “It’s a disaster. My husband left me here. He couldn’t take it anymore. He had no money. My daughter goes to school nearby. My case file is at a standstill in Beauvais. My husband is in prison. I make do.” Tania holds the keys to the washing machines, which she distributes twice a week. She knows everything: where to hang the washing, when the sheets are collected, which are changed once a week, how to set the heating, etc. and the rules: no fighting! “I don’t get paid. I’m not the boss. The manager isn’t here, so I have to do things properly. Before, it was an African woman. The others respect me.”

38She has regained a status as a “volunteer” or “helper”. This involvement in the life of the hostel also brought her a significant change in her living environment. Her room, which she shared with her daughter, is located in the “quietest” corridor of the hostel. She can use the kitchen in the manager’s studio and avoids the collective kitchen in the garden shed. Her domestic habits are therefore somewhat similar to those in standard housing.

39Reclaiming some control over one’s time, is this the strategy of those who suddenly disappear from an accommodation centre after a few days or weeks? How can we understand these courses of action? Little information filters through to those who stay. Some return to Porte de la Chapelle and occupy the pavements of the metropolis. Perhaps they are hoping for another evacuation at a later date, to be sent somewhere else that will seem more welcoming or less hostile? They are waiting for an event to happen to open up a new reality, an evacuation can mean a roof over their heads and new opportunities. For those who have been denied refugee status, it also means gaining time in relation to a deferred expulsion. In addition, it is a chance to get one’s bearings in France, to improve one’s command of the language, gleaning resources along chaotic paths.

40These various observations show the extent to which institutions control the space and time of exiles. Exiles’ movements range from settling to dispersal, from halting to scattering, from passage to reverse. While institutions settle, move, and make individuals wait, exiles struggle to find “their own rhythm by taking action, by choosing involvement rather than waiting” (Fogel, 2015). Fogel’s observation in relation to long-term undocumented migrants in Paris also applies to these newcomers who are directed away from the major urban centres. These two sides of time, both unbearable waiting and the accumulation of experience, come into play from the very first moments of settlement. In combining the analysis of spatial contexts and temporalities, it is exiles’ experience that becomes the relevant unit of analysis to understand their settlement process. According to Joseph (2007: 115-116), “it is indeed in the course of a lifetime that these small resistance techniques are woven together and take on real meaning. Otherwise, they are merely the defences of those who finds themselves cornered, with their back to the wall.” The settlement experience occurs in a place, but also between the metropolis and the remote areas, because relationships and movements are continuous.

Billiers, a municipality in Morbihan: the local level against the State

42In Billiers, Morbihan, in March 2017, the mayor described her municipality’s project as follows [17]: “It all started with young Aylan, who was found on a beach,” she explained. A group of residents approached the municipal authorities: “This is unacceptable.” In the centre of this village of fewer than 1,000 inhabitants, a pretty little town house owned by the municipality has been empty for years, somewhat abandoned. Two inhabitants offered to renovate it, one was a plumber, the other a painter. “We made a cosy little nest out of it,” said the mayor. During the renovation work, the town hall contacted the prefecture.

43

“We attended meetings. We were really pumped up. Our house was ready to receive four people, but suddenly the programme changed: we were told that the State wanted larger centres.”

44The reason given? Economic efficiency: according to the prefecture, associations providing support to asylum seekers should not waste time with multiple journeys across the territory. Another place had to be found to meet the needs. The Billiers sailing centre was turned into a reception centre. The State signed an agreement with the owner (the Pupilles de l’enseignement public [18]) to host fifteen to twenty people. The mayor convened a municipal council, in the presence of a representative of the prefect:

45

“There were 60% in favour of this reception programme and 40% whom I will describe as monsters [...]. On the other hand, the waverers came round to the merits of the project.”

46The municipal authorities then fitted out the centre for reception. “But in October 2016, some idiots found a way to burn down the centre. [...] There’s nothing left! It went up in smoke!” The story could not end there. Some inhabitants set up a movement: “J’ai mal à mon village” (“I feel the pain of my village”). 400 of the 930 inhabitants of Billiers met in front of the torched site to demonstrate, joined by associations and elected representatives from the region. Since in the end the prefecture had rejected “our initial ‘little house’ project”, the mayor told us:

47

“We wanted to use it for women victims of violence. The prefecture blocked it: ‘You are on standby for receiving migrants.’ Let’s be honest, one day the prefecture says ‘you’ll be hosting families,’ the next day ‘you will take in single men.’ After the dismantling of Calais, they knew who was getting on the buses. I saw the pictures where you could mainly see young men. They operated a triage, it’s an ugly word but that’s the word. For the administration, it’s more convenient to have everyone on hand.”

48This case highlights blockages in the temporary accommodation system for exiles. The prefecture manages, sorts sites and changes their scale, leaving local authorities in the dark. The realities of reception collide. First the rejection and the criminal act of the arsonists, then the villagers who agree to welcome young single men rather than families, and finally those who plan a humble reception in a small house, renovated on a volunteer basis by inhabitants. Lastly, the State, anxious to streamline the asylum system and to re-house exiles from humanitarian centres and camps as quickly as possible seeks to optimise social support. This case also reveals a disconnect in terms of scale: a village with only a few inhabitants in winter, came up against the prefect’s determination to open a place that was supposed to house a significant number of young Afghan men seeking asylum.

49The temporalities envisaged by the different actors also collide. The emotion caused by the dead Syrian boy on a beach cuts the villagers to the quick. They get organised immediately, they are ready and impatient. Administrative processes are slower. In Amiens, a woman who had offered part of her home to host an asylum seeker more than a year ago told us, in the summer of 2017, that she was “still waiting.” State-administered solidarity and local solidarity can be out of step. To this day, the asylum seekers “promised” to Billiers have not yet arrived: a holiday centre has been damaged and the “little blue house” is still unoccupied.

Two refugees and a dozen caregivers in South Finistère

50Other experiences took a more positive course. For example, in Combrit-Sainte-Marine, South Finistère, with 4,000 inhabitants, two Eritrean exiles were hosted in March 2016. A balance was achieved in term of resources between the size of the seaside resort and the limited number of exiles received: while the arrivals came from afar, they have faces and the inhabitants who lived there all year round could get to know them, recognise them and appreciate them. The arrival of migrants seemed to go smoothly, at the very least there were no public clashes, except for the uproar from local elected representatives of the extreme right. This is because conditions were different: the exiles are males, not so young (thirty-eight and fifty years old), who had obtained the status of refugee, who had accommodation and who were Christian. But the quality of the accommodation and mutual familiarity do not preclude the persistence of serious obstacles: exceptional slowness in obtaining and renewing administrative papers, obstructed access to employment and a faltering command of the French language.

51After spending time on the streets of Paris, Asante, aged fifty, and Janice, aged thirty-eight, met in Villemomble, Île-de-France, in 2015, where they were taken in for eight months by the association ADOMA. [19] In Eritrea, they had both experienced police and military violence. They were first sent to Quimper in February 2016, and then, in March 2016, they were hosted in a municipal housing in Combrit-Sainte-Marine. From February 2017 until 2019, we regularly followed up on them and the people around them.