The Liminal Space in Calais

Threat and Suffering: The Liminal Space of “The Jungle”

Howarth, Anita and Ibrahim, Yasmin. (2012). ‘Threat and Suffering: The Liminal Space of “The Jungle”’. in Andrews, H. and Roberts, L. Liminal Spaces. London: Routledge.

By AmirahBreen (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

In 2009 French authorities demolished and cleared an informal shelter in Calais known as "the Jungle". British national press constructed this as a rational response to the problem of illegal migration. Crucial to this justification was the metaphoric use "The Jungle" to describe the descent into anarchic degradation which spilt out into surrounding spaces of civility. This metaphor facilitated the use of a pseudo-rational discourse in which the appropriate policy response to (physical and moral) threat was to expel the other, demolish "The Jungle" so deal forcibly with the illegal migrants. Within this pseudo-rational discourse the issue of immigration becomes a liminal space between rationality and atavism in enlightened societies.