The Functions and Legitimization of Suffering in Calais, France

Abstract

The instrumentalisation of disaster – long considered a feature of wars and famines in Africa, for example – has now been brought right into the heart of Europe. Suffering in Calais has been manipulated for the purpose of deterrence and for domestic political purposes, and forms part of a wider system of outsourcing violence and suffering that has been legitimised through Arendt’s “action as propaganda” and through perverse distributions of shame.