Under one roof: Strategic intersectionality among women negotiating the Calais border under lockdown

Abstract

Calais has attracted the attention of numerous scholars since it emerged as a key European migration pressure point in the early 1990s. Yet in-depth discussions relating to the experiences of displaced women at this border remain rare. This article draws on my unexpected experience of spending 3 months in lockdown with border-crossing women in Calais when the field research I had been carrying out with (predominantly male) people living in makeshift camps at the border was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020. Drawing on the work of feminist geographers I conceptualise the northern French border as a virilised space, where policing that imposes harsh living conditions at the border reinforces male subjectivities and exacerbates gender-based exclusion and violence. Drawing on ethnographic insights from this intimate period of living together, I then detail how lockdown prompted the women I was living with to renegotiate this terrain with physical proximity to their male counterparts ruled out. I argue that the role of domestic space changed during this period, from one of hindrance to the mobility of the female body to one of strategic potential. In the light of these findings, I propose a conceptualisation of the lockdown period as a moment of retreat and rupture that facilitated these women’s engagement in strategic intersectionality, drawing on their unique positions as a small but diverse group to endure crisis and negotiate opportunities to reach the United Kingdom.