Tearing the Land From Underfoot: Environmental Racism at the Northern French Border

Abstract

Much attention has been devoted to the infliction of hostile environments on people on the move in political and discursive terms. However, less attention has been paid to the cultivation of physically hostile environments where they dwell. Building on critical border and environmental justice studies, this article examines how the natural environment is used and altered by state authorities at the northern French border to try and render it unliveable for people on the move. It highlights three key ways in which environmental racism manifests in the border zone: the exposure of border dwellers to unhealthy environments, the reclamation of their living sites and active damage to their living environments. The implications are both detrimental to the well-being of those living in the borderlands and symbolic, othering people on the move while erasing traces of their presence at the border and evidence of state violence against them.