The spaces migrants take up, either with their literal bodies, or with the communities they are part of, play crucial roles in how they move and live. In Europe, migration has been at the forefront of policy struggles for the past several years, and tensions between migrant communities and European governments continue to rise. By existing in Europe, migrants are already protesting the policies that aim to eradicate them from the continent.
I aim to focus on the spaces diaspora communities create for themselves and frequent through film exposures of the 18th, 19th and 20th arrondissements of Paris. France and Europe aim to minimize the spaces in which diaspora communities can express their culture and traditions, while never accepting them to be entirely European, creating a static minority society. Through two main texts “The Birth of a European Public: Migration, Postnationality, and Race in the Uniting of Europe” by Fatima El-Tayeb, and “Moroccan migrant women: Transnationalism, nation-states and gender” by Ruba Salih, I analysed how, mainly through North African diaspora communities in Europe, in trying to live up to Europe’s supposed standards of how to assimilate into European ideals, migrants are constantly living in stasis, stuck between what is being asked of them and what they are able to deliver. The photos accompanied this analysis, and provided a visual component to underline the static nature of migrants’ situation in Europe.
