Participatory Drawing and Geoeconomic Mapping in Paris–La Chapelle: A Conjunctural Approach for Research Beyond Design

This article critically reflects on research into a daily free food distribution in the inner-city Parisian neighborhood of La Chapelle. Ongoing since 2016, the Solidarity Breakfast presents itself as the legacy of “acts of hospitality” developed in response to the 2015 “migrant crisis,” claiming to welcome migrants by offering them a meal in the park. This article analyzes participatory drawing activities organized during the breakfast for the purposes of the research project, and discusses a selection of the drawings created there. It considers how internalist depictions of the microscale of the everyday make visible the relational space, whereas map-like drawings show a broader perspective in which power relations linked to the wider context of geopolitical and geo-economic entanglements are reiterated and reinscribed. By articulating these perspectives, the article examines how social practices and imaginaries are subsumed by neoliberal regimes. It acknowledges the feminist insight that “the personal is political,” but argues that local social practices do not necessarily produce wider emancipatory impacts, and that participatory research can be used to sustain the routine rather than represent its political relevance. However hospitable the breakfast might be, its relational dimension might perpetuate rather than address injustice. The article concludes that the nature of the knowledge that participatory approaches elicit from the field can be unpredictable, and is therefore key to broader conjunctural analysis, provided that its critical scope is broad enough to question the conditions from which the research itself has emerged.