The Talking Camps

This book is the fruit of four years' research by the Liminal team (Linguistic and Intercultural Mediations in a context of International Migrations - ANR, Inalco, 2017-2021) in camps and reception centres for asylum seekers. Surveys were carried out in Pashto, Persian, Arabic(s), Urdu, Tigrinya, French, English, Italian, as close to the actors as possible, in the Paris region, the Calais and on the French-English and French-Italian borders. Using an original methodology and a multi-disciplinary approach at the crossroads of anthropology and sociolinguistics, the book draws up a migralect, the performative language of the camps and borders, to determine the power of language in the constrained situations. The Talking Camps offers a new perspective on language, highlighting what is at the core of migration: a political experience of violence and resistance. The migrant reception crisis has rocked Europe since 2015 and remains a contentious issue in the current political scenario. The plunge into the linguistic universe of exile and asylum will be of unprecedented interest to migration and refugee studies scholars, those working in the field, the media and to the general public.