Phantom Inhabitation: Calais’ Uninhabitable Migrant Spaces Inhabited Through Art

The French port city of Calais has increasingly become uninhabitable for migrants. While their presence in the city center has been criminalized, the encampments on its outskirts are routinely, violently demolished. These uninhabitable and erased spaces, this paper argues, form traumatic and dehumanizing environments which haunt both the migrants and the city. Migrants, however, find ways to cope with these haunting spaces by creating artwork in what this paper identifies as a form of phantom inhabitation. We analyze two case studies: Nous Sommes Aussi des Artistes (we are also artists) which exhibited migrant artwork in Calais city center, and the work of the Iranian artist Majid Adin who inhabits, through his animation of Rocket Man, the precarious spaces he experienced in Calais Jungle. Through this investigation the paper shows how art creates a form of inhabitation that deals with haunting spaces of exclusion both in real time and in retrospect.