This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. Without cookies your experience may not be seamless. What does it mean to care in the context of extreme adversity, such as the crisis of hospitality that migrants have encountered in Europe in the past decade? Drawing on a geographies-of-care framework, this chapter follows the case study of a humanitarian volunteer in the unofficial refugee camp in Calais, France.
However, the assumed figure of the adult as carer in this theoretical approach is challenged by the complexities of lives on the move and the contested nature of childhood. The wider backdrop to this case study is the movement of more than one million asylum seekers entering Europe in , some of whom made their way to the refugee camp in Calais, France, as a key destination point for entering the UK Clayton and Willis, This was a volatile context, with both the UK Home Office and French authorities prioritizing the securitization of the region, rather than providing assistance or protection for refugees.
For example, the camp in Calais was repeatedly demolished and reconstructed in different forms, with mass evictions and demolitions having taken place by October The lack of official recognition of the Calais refugee camp by either the British or French authorities meant that larger international charities were not present Clayton and Willis, Instead, a smaller collection of charities and volunteer organizations provided essential daily services to fill this void.
Notwithstanding the fact that such endeavours are complex and often tenuous, they are inevitably tied to our moral responsibilities towards others Wilkinson, and may also be linked with concepts of care.
Care, as an interdependent relationship involving both physical and emotional labour Bowlby, and ethical questions, may be deeply challenging in the context of an extreme situation such as an unofficial refugee camp and a crisis of hospitality. It begins by introducing her initiation into humanitarian volunteering in the refugee camp.
