The Institute in Paris acts in support of refugees and awareness of border violence

The impact and variable structures of border regimes are everywhere in the learning experience at the University’s Institute in Paris, not just in personal negotiation with student visas but also as one of the major transversal dimensions of our programmes. So it’s particularly encouraging that students are taking their classroom learning out into their lives in the city.  

Lucille Kendon, a third-year undergraduate studying towards a BA in French with International Relations, has been leading the way to develop a Student Action for Refugees (STAR) initiative at the Institute. STAR is a network of students in the UK which aims to create a more welcoming society for refugees. STAR’s members volunteer locally with refugees, campaign nationally for policy change, and promote access to higher education for refugees through their Equal Access Campaign. Here in Paris, ULIP STAR has been raising awareness of STAR's work, running fundraising events to support STAR and offering educational resources to learn about the asylum system. This autumn, the Institute's group will be joining forces with students from the American University of Paris, to start volunteering in Paris and to directly help the local community, in particular with a charity which offers free breakfast for refugees. 

Meanwhile, Nuha Binti Abdul Halim, who studied towards her MA Urban History and Culture at the Institute in 2022-23, has taken the experiences she gained from carrying out extensive fieldwork with volunteer organisations in the City of Paris into professional work. Nuha joined the major French agency France, Terre d’Asile, responsible for provision of administrative and social support for asylum seekers, in 2024. Today, she carries out missions across the city, identifying and orienting people on the move across the continent who are struggling to access their rights. 

It is in the context of endemic violence and loss of human life at the Channel border that the small act of transporting the cardboard books, or cartonera, made by asylum seekers and refugees in Paris to the UK takes on its significance. These books were made over several years as part of a project led by the Institute’s Paris Centre for Migrant Writing and Expression, in partnership with the City’s vital and vibrant lending library network, made up of tens of local libraries across the city which vulnerable people often use as a first port of call to access services and learning opportunities. The cartonera project was conceived less as a learning opportunity and more as a free space – the space of a book that could be made individually or collectively – away from the constraints of an asylum application or other administrative battles. The books tell all sorts of stories, of home, of work, of animals and plants, of journeys, of festivities. They are very moving both for the insights they offer and the fragility of their own form.  

A selection travelled to the UK as part of the current exhibition Drawing the Unspeakable, curated by broadcaster David Dimbleby and his daughter Liza Dimbleby, at the Towner Gallery in Eastbourne. Bringing together a major installation of drawings from artists including Louise Bourgeois, David Hockney, Ken Kiff, Leon Kossoff, L.S. Lowry, Tracey Emin, Barbara Hepworth, amongst many others, the show offers a searching look at the way drawing allows people to channel their fears and the trials they have faced. Within the show, a special place is reserved for the outsider work from Paris, setting the art in relation to the contemporary border violence that is so close and yet can feel so far away from the beautiful gallery spaces of the Towner in Eastbourne.