The expediency of literature: French humanitarian narratives between politics and the market

This essay examines how contemporary French literature and humanitarian organizations work in tandem to respond to the international migrant “crisis.” Taking recent French legislation around detention, deportation, and national identity as a starting point, this article identifies an emerging literary activism in France that retorts to restrictive laws and takes the form of collaborations with solidarity NGOs. Drawing on George Yúdice's notion of “culture as resource,” I argue that literary works’ ability to raise awareness about current migrations is enhanced when they sit alongside the actions of humanitarian NGOs. In the first part, I sketch out the broader phenomenon of solidarity with migrants by means of numerous literary examples. I then zero in on two literary works—Matéi Visniec's play Migraaaants and Émilie de Turckheim's autofictional text Le Prince à la petite tasse—to demonstrate how literature and humanitarian NGOs work in lockstep to raise awareness as well as funds for migrants and refugees. In and of themselves, literary works may, on occasion, spark public debate about the plight of migrants. However, their partnership with NGOs amplifies their potential to be socially transformative.

In the past two decades, large-scale migrations to Europe from Africa and the Middle East have inspired a rich literary production in French that reflects on these new realities and critiques political debates about immigration. These works, published in France since 2000, openly challenge the portrayal in French legal, political, and journalistic discourses of migrants as threats to the nation-state and the European Union as a whole. They respond critically to key events that contributed to an anti-immigration climate in France, such as the law of 10 December 2003, which restricted the right of political asylum by granting OFPRA (L’Office français de protection des réfugiés et apatrides) full powers to determine asylum claims, as well as the law of 16 June 2011, which facilitated migrants’ deportation from France. Watershed moments in French politics include President Nicolas Sarkozy's establishment, in 2007, of a Ministry of Immigration, Integration, National Identity and Co-Development, which treated immigration as a security issue, and minister Éric Besson's launching of a national identity debate in 2009, which stigmatized French citizens of foreign origin. The French media's sensationalist coverage of humanitarian disasters—the October 2013 Lampedusa shipwreck and the September 2015 drowning of 3-year-old Syrian boy Aylan Kurdi, especially—have triggered forceful reactions in the literary world.

Specifically, French authors have voiced critiques of the detention and deportation procedures enabled by asylum law (Marie Cosnay), the terms of the debate on national identity (Éric Pessan and Nicole Caligaris, Fatou Diome, Alice Zeniter), and media coverage of the Mediterranean drownings (Maylis de Kerangal, Régis Jauffret). In May of 2017, 60 renowned novelists—Tahar Ben Jelloun, Patrick Chamoiseau, and Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, among others—published a literary manifesto, “Nous sommes plus grands que nous,” in the literary magazine Le 1 hebdo. The manifesto called for the mobilization of literature against right-wing extremism and in favor of migrants’ rights and recognition. An activist consciousness appears to have emerged among contemporary French writers, who imagine alternatives to the current relationship between migrants and the French nation-state and provide a counterpoint to journalistic and political discourses that consider migrants in terms of quotas or waves.

French authors’ defense of traditional ideals of hospitality and human rights has resonated with other agents of the literary field: publishers, booksellers, literary prize juries, as well as cultural institutions such as the National Museum of the History of Immigration and Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Together, they have mobilized literature to encourage public solidarity with migrants and refugees. To this end, they have organized cultural events promoting these works, donated the proceeds from book sales to humanitarian organizations, and encouraged publics to sign petitions that would benefit migrants. For instance, in September 2015, the French Ministry of Culture and Communication, in collaboration with the National Museum of the History of Immigration, launched a day-long cultural event, “Migrations. 12 heures pour changer le regard.” The event mobilized artists and intellectuals around debates, exhibitions, film screenings, and readings of exiled Syrian poet Adonis and Italian playwright Lina Prosa, well-known for her plays about Lampedusa. Moreover, on 17 November 2018, Albin Michel organized an event on Instagram, where one hundred blog writers published posts under the hashtag Une prière à la mer. The French literary field has thus taken a humanitarian approach to irregular migration and, in particular, to the so-called European migrant “crisis” by insisting on human rights and the values of rescue and protection. Humanitarianism in this case should be understood not in its classical sense of aid provided by nongovernmental organizations to the Global South during wars or after natural disasters, but in the sense proposed by Didier Fassin (2012)—as care provided to vulnerable populations such as “the victims of poverty, homelessness, unemployment, and exile” within the Global North (x). The 2015 migrant crisis has indeed unveiled the migrants’ presence at the borders of Europe, rather than in distant lands.

In turn, nongovernmental organizations have seized the potential of this humanitarian literary production to advocate for migrants and refugees. Solidarity and humanitarian NGOs—La Cimade, Le Groupe d’information et de soutien des immigrés (GISTI), Le Samu Social de Paris, La Ligue internationale contre le racisme et l’antisémitisme (LICRA), Emmaüs France, Utopia 56, EncRages, SOS Méditerranée, Singa France, L’Auberge des Migrants, Amnesty International, UNICEF and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), among others—have employed literature as a cultural, economic, and pedagogical resource in the service of migrants and refugees. They have, for instance, instrumentalized writers’ celebrity status in fund-raising campaigns, tweeted about new literary works about refugees, organized cultural events that aimed to recruit volunteers, and even provided accurate statistical data to publishers, resulting in collaborative literary works (this is the way La Cimade contributed to the writing of Eux, c’est nous). In a feedback loop, both the French literary field and humanitarian organizations have responded to recent migrations in ways that bring literature, politics, and economics into critical dialogue.

Commodity activism

Several scholars have probed the connections between politics and consumerism, pointing out that, under neoliberalism, social engagement is embedded in consumption practices. Roopali Mukherjee and Sarah Banet-Weiser (2012) have proposed the concept of “commodity activism” to describe a new mode of activism that has emerged in neoliberal societies, whereby social resistance is expressed through the act of consuming cultural products and services (1). One can participate in commodity activism through a wide range of means: by purchasing books whose revenues are donated to non-profits, attending concerts benefiting vulnerable populations, or wearing wristbands. Although Mukherjee and Banet-Weiser focus on individual consumers, these practices can be extended to humanitarian organizations that publicize literary works on social media and to publishers, who donate the proceeds from their book sales to activist NGOs. Consider the following examples. In 2016, a group of nearly 60 publishers, who came together under the label “Les éditeurs jeunesse pour les réfugiés,” donated €100,000 from the sales of Eux, c’est nous to La Cimade. Published with Gallimard Jeunesse, this didactic booklet targets young readers and explores issues of hospitality and altruism. In 2016, as well, Éditions Points issued Bienvenue! Trente-quatre auteurs pour les réfugiés in partnership with UNHCR. The foreword of the short story collection presents the history of UNHCR and explains the specific ways in which readers’ donations could assist refugees. Similarly, the profits from Bienvenue à Calais, a 2016 booklet that denounced the living conditions in the Calais “Jungle,” went to the association L’Auberge des Migrants. Another case in point is the Albin Michel publishing house, which donated the proceeds from Khaled Hosseini's Une prière à la mer (Sea Prayer, in the original) to La Cimade, while the author donated his royalties to UNHCR in 2018. That very same year, all the authors included in the short story collection Osons la fraternité! Les écrivains aux côté des migrants donated their royalties to GISTI. ¹ Often issued in paperback and priced cheaply, these books sport the logo of humanitarian organizations on their jacket and feature words alerting readers to the fact that they will make a donation with their purchase.

The notion of commodity activism may evoke the image of indolent do-gooders who express solidarity with a credit card, a click of the mouse, or from the comfort of their home. Take the act of signing online petitions. In L’appel de Calais—posted on Change.org in October 2015 and signed by more than 800 intellectuals—the signatories urged the French government to improve the conditions of the Calais “Jungle” and declared their support of the humanitarian NGOs operating on the ground. Moreover, on 11 October 2020, La Cimade advertised France 2's broadcasting of the film Samba, adapted from Delphine Coulin's eponymous novel, on its Facebook page. The film synopsis was followed by a call to action: “Pour vous mobiliser sur ce sujet, signez notre pétition pour la régularisation des personnes sans-papiers.” The petition, which collected nearly 26,700 signatures by 31 December 2021, explains the dire situation of several undocumented migrants addressed by their first names. It appeals emotionally to the public by punctuating the text with repetitive and moving observations about France's refusal to grant these migrants legal status despite the length of time they have lived in France and their exemplary service to the country. As is clear from these examples, both socially-conscious intellectuals and solidarity NGOs use interactive media to generate support and mobilize the public's affect. If donations engage consumers commercially, petitions command their attention momentarily, and both make social engagement easy. Without dismissing these activist practices because they are consumerist, one can regard them as potentially beneficial: as economic and political resources that raise awareness and funds on behalf of migrants and refugees. At the same time, this type of feel-good activism promotes an indirect engagement with refugees—that is, mediated by literary institutions and corporations—and highlights the emotions of the benefactors.

Ironic solidarity

It is this focus on oneself as do-gooder that Lilie Chouliaraki (2013) explores in The Ironic Spectator, which demonstrates how the communication of solidarity towards vulnerable subjects has changed in the past few decades in the field of humanitarianism. She argues that in the context of neoliberal capitalism (with its focus on individual self-fulfillment) and of the rise of online media (with its interactive possibilities), solidarity has shifted from “an other-oriented morality, where doing good to others is about our common humanity” to “a self-oriented morality, where doing good to others is about ‘how I feel’ and must, therefore, be rewarded by minor gratifications to the self” such as attending a rock concert, tweeting a message, or completing an online ActionAid quiz, among other manifestations (Chouliaraki, 2013: 3). The context of commodity culture in which contemporary activism unfolds turns us into “ironic spectator[s]” of the suffering of vulnerable others (Chouliaraki, 2013: 2). As she puts it, we are simultaneously “sceptical towards any moral appeal to solidary action and, yet, open to doing something about those who suffer” (Chouliaraki, 2013: 2). The irony refers to our awareness that enacting solidarity today largely concerns self-enjoyment and has little or no political impact.

The ambivalence that Chouliaraki identifies at the heart of contemporary humanitarianism also characterizes French authors’ engagement on behalf of vulnerable subjects. ² On the one hand, they do not claim that literature can change the world or that it should be politically committed. On the other, they engage with societal issues out of indignation with the unacceptable circumstances in which marginalized populations are caught. ³ The French-Senegalese writer Fatou Diome is a good case in point. In an interview, the author mentions her bestseller novel about African migration to France to explain how, for her, literature is at once limiting and enabling:

Le Ventre de l’Atlantique a été publié en 2003, pourtant, les migrants meurent encore en mer. Pour moi, la littérature est simplement un moyen de participer aux débats de mon époque, une façon de dire que je ne suis pas indifférente, je me sens concernée. N’ayant ni le pouvoir de signer des décrets ni celui de changer une loi, il me reste la liberté d’expression pour dénoncer tout ce que je déplore. (qtd. in Buekens, 2019, par. 5)

Sometimes authors go beyond denouncing deplorable migrant conditions and xenophobic legislation within their literary works by volunteering for solidarity NGOs such as La Cimade (Delphine Coulin, Marie Cosnay), interviewing migrants (Matéi Visniec), visiting refugee camps (Laurent Gaudé) and immigration detention centers (Karine Tuil). Even when they do not participate in on-the-ground actions, some authors (Olivier Adam in À l’abri de rien, Béatrice Huret in Calais mon amour, Émilie de Turckheim in Le Prince à la petite tasse) weave references to activist NGOs into their novels’ plots, informing readers about the existence of pro-migrant organizations and about opportunities for social engagement. In fact, authorship and literary content matter for humanitarian organizations, who benefit from authors’ public intellectual status and their works’ humanitarian themes. The polemic generated by the publication of Shumona Sinha's novel Assommons les pauvres! is instructive of the cultural and pedagogical capital that authors carry in the eyes of NGOs. The novel's unnamed female narrator works for L’Office français de protection des réfugiés et apatrides—just like the author—interpreting asylum seekers’ often mendacious stories for the French authorities. In an inexplicable fit of anger, one day she hits a refugee with a bottle on the head. This act of violence, the negative portrayal of refugees, and the scathing description of the French asylum system are unusual subject matter, as works of migrant literature generally display liberal-humanist values and sympathy for refugees. Shortly after the novel's publication, OFPRA fired Sinha for what they viewed as problematic content and for the author's unflattering description of the organization's work. In all probability, OFPRA assumed that the narrator stood for the author, reading Assommons les pauvres! as autofiction. In contrast to OFPRA's punitive measures, the novel has garnered critical accolades in the French literary field, was nominated for Prix Renaudot and Prix Médicis, and received the 2011 Prix du roman populiste and the 2012 Prix Valéry-Larbaud. No doubt, the story of Sinha's getting fired from OFPRA has contributed to the media hype and literary critics’ attention.

The fact that the same literary text elicited opposing interpretations underscores the ambivalence of literary form. As Fatou Diome asserts, “Ce sont les lecteurs … qui décident de la repercussion de nos livres en fonction de leur sensibilité” (qtd. in Buekens, 2019: par. 5). Take the case of De Turckheim’s (2018) Le Prince à la petite tasse, which—in online review forums—was at once praised for its humanitarian message and castigated for monetizing the experience of hosting a refugee by publishing a book about it. Consider also the example of Delphine Coulin’s (2017) Une fille dans la jungle, a novel about unaccompanied minors who languish in Calais while waiting for a chance to cross the English Channel. Whereas it may not have mobilized some readers, it has spurred one blogger to research humanitarian NGOs and contact Utopia 56 to volunteer for refugees (Romanthé, 2017). However, evidence of literary works triggering reader engagement in the world is sparse. It is notoriously difficult to assess the effectiveness of literature to impact society and influence policy by content alone.

Given the instability of literary interpretations, it is difficult to guarantee any politics of form. That is why I argue that the activist potential of literary works is enhanced through collaboration with nongovernmental organizations. NGOs’ publicizing literary works about migration acts as a selection tool in the plethora of books published every year. They give visibility to migration-themed works, investing them with documentary or testimonial value, while capitalizing on authors’ cultural cachet, especially if they are public intellectuals. A polemical essay such as Fatou Diome’s (2017) Marianne porte plainte!—which harshly criticizes the French national identity debate and takes a forceful ideological stand with respect to Europe's responsibility for global migrations—may not need much publicity from the humanitarian field, but other fictional works might get lost in the surplus of books. And yet, not all literary works lend themselves to instrumentalization by activist NGOs. Texts such as Sinha’s (2011) politically incorrect Assommons les pauvres! or Maylis de Kerangal’s (2015) overtly apolitical essay À ce stade de la nuit, which takes radio news about a shipwreck as a pretext for reflecting lyrically on Lampedusa, do not serve NGOs’ activist agendas so well. Humanitarian organizations take up those literary works that are aligned with their values and can be used as resources in their awareness- and fund-raising campaigns.

The expediency of literature

George Yúdice’s (2003) notion of culture as resource, as developed in his study The Expediency of Culture, helps us pinpoint this utilitarian use of literature. Focusing on the United States and Latin America, Yúdice argues that, since the Cold War, “culture is increasingly wielded as a resource for both sociopolitical and economic amelioration” (2003: 9)—for example, in urban development, tourism, and the heritage industries. To the extent that it can “enhance education, solve racial strife, help reverse urban blight through cultural tourism, create jobs, [and] reduce crime” (2003: 12), it is “an expedient” or “a means to an end” (2003: 26). Yúdice scrutinizes a wide range of actors, from corporations and nongovernmental organizations to cultural networks and artists, who instrumentalize culture to empower marginalized populations. This utilitarian aspect, Yúdice argues, has altogether displaced earlier understandings of culture as autonomous or disinterested, and brought to the fore issues of “management, conservation, access, distribution, and investment” in culture (2003: 1).

Several scholars have rightfully criticized Yúdice's main claim that, in a global era, autonomous notions of culture “give way to the expediency of culture” (2003: 334). In a harsh review, Gregory Lobo (2004) takes issue with the alleged shift from autonomy to expediency and points out that instrumentalist uses of culture are nothing new. In his view, present-day culture is inextricably linked to daily life: “it is the realm in which we live, it is the matrix according to which we make sense of the things we experience” (2004: 107). That culture is exclusively expedient, as Yúdice asserts, is an overstatement. For Lobo, Yúdice's argument is really about “some uses of culture in an expedient sense,” rather than culture tout court (2004: 108). For her part, Elizabeth Walden (2004) faults Yúdice for not discussing the content of culture and for treating it as a mere resource for social justice and economic projects. Like Lobo, Walden insists that “culture as resource has not superseded culture as a sphere of ideology.”

These astute critiques help us apprehend the phenomenon of French literary activism, as well. While my analysis underscores expedient uses of humanitarian narratives, the literary works under discussion have also been read for their aesthetic value. Lay readers who wrote reviews on their blogs and digital review forums often seemed unaware of how these works had fared in the French literary field and of the fact that they had been publicized by activist NGOs. Humanitarian narratives can therefore be grasped at once in terms of autonomy and expediency. Moreover, what makes these works expedient depends, in large part, on their content, as shown in the previous section. And as in Yúdice's model, where resistance emerges from the civil society, in France, writers as well as humanitarians position their work against a government that, in their view, has failed to address the migrant crisis adequately. These literary works serve as counternarratives to French and European debates about migration, taking the place of ineffective politics by adopting mundane tactics such as hosting refugees in citizens’ homes or mobilizing publics to improve the living conditions of migrants. Yúdice's notions of “resource” and “expediency” are apposite lenses through which to read humanitarian narratives because the terms themselves underscore the literary works’ activist potential rather than their real-world consequences. As means to an end, humanitarian narratives allow us to observe how contemporary literature participates in forms of pro-migrant activism. One way in which authors express their solidarity with pro-migrant activism is by thematizing and even instrumentalizing humanitarianism intratextually. The two literary works I discuss next represent humanitarianism as a commercial enterprise intended to exploit migrants’ vulnerability (Migraaaants) and as a concern with doing good on behalf of common humanity (Le Prince à la petite tasse). These differing portrayals aim to create a space for debates about the global migrant crisis and Europe's responsibility in addressing it—a goal shared by the solidarity NGOs that publicized them.

The humanitarian as profiteer in Matéi Visniec's Migraaaants

Matéi Visniec (2016) is a renowned Romanian-French playwright and novelist who went into exile in France in 1987 and currently works as a journalist at Radio France Internationale. Many of his works explore the crushing effect of totalitarian regimes over individual lives. Migraaaants ou On est trop nombreux sur ce putain de bateau ou Le Salon de la cloture was born out of his urgent need to respond to the 2015 European migrant crisis and to counter its sensationalist media representations. ⁴ As a journalist, Visniec self-admittedly felt bombarded by images of migrants and sought, in writing his play, to understand the deeper causes of recent migrations. For documentation, Visniec read newspaper articles and news reports, traveled to some of the countries affected (Italy, Greece, Hungary, Turkey), and conducted interviews with the displaced. The blurred boundary between playwright and journalist as well as the fictionalized use of migrant testimonies position Visniec as a witness to migrants’ experiences. The author seeks to place the reader-spectator in the same position through his choice of immersive theater—the stage directions ask audiences to respond to actors’ questions and commands. Some directors have staged immersive performances to great effect. In an October 2018 performance at the Ion Luca Caragiale National Theater in Bucharest, Romania, the director Zalán Zakariás reversed spaces: the spectators were seated on the stage, in a crammed space reminiscent of a crowded boat, while the actors played among the rows of empty seats. The actors’ embodied presence on the stage and the role reversal between vulnerable migrants and safe spectators suggested that migrants’ suffering is not distant from us. As critic Agnes Woolley (2014) explains, “plays engage the phenomenological experience of the theatrical event to explore how we witness another's suffering” (7). Theater can interpellate publics in ways that other literary genres cannot.

In his “Note d’intention” preceding the play, Visniec rejects the notion of politically engaged theater, preferring to “capter dans cette pièce le côté émotionnel et human du phénomène” (Visniec 2016: 13). In a series of brief vignettes, Migraaaants explores generalized corruption and the economic exploitation of migrants by means of blackmail, kidnapping, torture, as well as sex, child, and organ trafficking. These situations can elicit our shock, rage, dismay, or compassion, but Visniec renders the play's bleak content palatable by using dark humor, the absurd, and the grotesque. Take, for instance, the scene in which a boat full of migrants is sinking and the smugglers debate whom to throw overboard because a few migrants have infiltrated the boat without paying for the passage. One smuggler suggests they choose two Christians and two Muslims so that the European authorities do not accuse them of religious bias. Visniec draws attention to migrants’ plight more effectively by ridiculing the way in which political correctness prevails over human lives.

At the level of the content, then, Migraaaants underscores how humanitarianism can be instrumentalized for political and commercial ends. As a discourse and practice of rescuing and caring for suffering others, humanitarianism seems to have been exhausted. The play suggests that Europe has abandoned its long-standing values of free circulation, human rights, and an open society. The figure of the humanitarian as profiteer looms large. Particularly poignant is the cynical dialogue between the President of a European country and his speech coach, who advises the former to phrase his anti-immigrant proposals in humanitarian terms to better manipulate his voters: “Le Coach: ‘On ne peut pas recevoir toute la misère du monde.’ Je vous propose à la place: ‘Nous restons sensibles à toute la misère du monde …’” (Visniec, 2016: 51). As the Coach further explains, “ce qui est important c’est de jouer un peu sur la corde de l’émotion. […] Vous enflammer un peu en recourant au mot ‘humanisme’ ça ne peut pas faire du mal” (Visniec, 2016: 112–113). Numerous other characters are smugglers who misappropriate the humanitarian rhetoric of aid in order to persuade migrants to sell their organs and to traffic migrant children. As a trafficker explains to parents, “Nous sommes une organisation humanitaire qui sauve les enfants en détresse. Et vos enfants, vous le savez bien, ils sont en détresse” (Visniec, 2016: 99). Invoking the Declaration of the Rights of the Child, the trafficker adds that “C’est par la loi que vos enfants seront protégés en Europe, et ces lois sont bonnes. Vos enfants seront nourris, soignés, envoyés à l’école …” (Visniec, 2016: 100). Visniec contrasts these insincere words with a news bulletin in scene 23, which reveals “la disparition de plus de dix mille enfants migrants, durant les deux dernières années” at the hands of criminal organizations (2016: 143). In these examples, humanitarianism is a cover for political correctness and ruthless exploitation. But Migraaaants equally contains brief instances of humanitarian solidarity, as in scene 18, where Igor, an elderly man from the Balkans, starts demolishing one of his house walls to transform it into a door. Alarmed by the erection of barbed wire fences in his country and stubbornly opposed to his wife's fear of migrants, he turns his house into a hospitable space of circulation and repose for migrants traveling on the Balkan route. The character of Igor exemplifies the individual tactics of resistance against official anti-immigration politics. Visniec juxtaposes entrepreneurial humanitarians such as Igor and profiteering humanitarians represented by right-wing politicians and human traffickers to frame his play as a space of debate about migration and humanitarian action. He invites publics to reflect on their own position of passive observers and/or active participants.

While theater can implicate audiences as witnesses, it can also turn suffering into spectacle, thus commodifying humanitarianism. Take the opening scene, in which a smuggler addresses the audience members as if they were clandestine migrants. He orders them to show him their cell phones and to record Lampedusa's emergency number, which he dictates to them:

Le numéro que je vais vous donner sera, demain, votre bien le plus précieux. […] C’est plus précieux que la prunelle de vos yeux. Si cette nuit le diable vient et vous dit: ‘alors, tu me donnes quoi, à moi, car il faut me donner quelque chose pour que je te laisse en vie, tu me donnes un oeil ou tu me donnes ton téléphone portable?’ vous dites quoi? (Visniec, 2016: 19–20)

An eye for a cell phone—the hyperbole may strike us as comic if it didn't foreshadow scenes in which migrants will consent to trafficking their organs to help their families emigrate. In subsequent scenes, smugglers walk among spectators to count them and distribute life jackets to those who have infiltrated the boat without paying. Explanations of how migrants should put their life jackets on are followed by the punchline, “Allez, vous sautez ou c’est moi qui vous jette?” (Visniec, 2016: 64). Visniec's choice of harrowing situations is understandable given his aim of placing spectators in migrants’ shoes so that they understand the migrants’ plight affectively. However, the very techniques of immersive theater can also prevent spectators from suspending their disbelief. In a performance by La Comédie de Tanger in February 2018, for instance, the actors’ antics during the lifejacket scene elicited laughter among the audience members. Laughter points out the absurdity of the distressful scenarios very effectively, but collective laughter also makes spectators aware that they are part of a larger audience and that they are watching an entertaining show. They may best be viewed as Chouliaraki's ironic spectators—at once moved by the spectacle of vulnerable migrants and skeptical about their power to act upon a mediated theatrical representation.

Laughter aside, dark scenes focusing on migrants’ susceptibility to exploitation serve a broader purpose in Visniec's play. Migraaaants seeks to reframe the European migrant crisis within the larger context of economic globalization, which the author considers, in great part, to be the root cause of present-day migrations. In “Scène en réserve 4,” numerous migrant characters voice their reasons for migrating to Europe, which has allured them with images of material goods and comfortable lives via global media. It is now their turn to partake of these goods, they claim, especially since it was Europe that had brought about

[l]a colonisation, la décolonisation, la démocratie, la Première Guerre mondiale, la Deuxième Guerre mondiale, le communisme, le nazisme, le libéralisme, l’ultralibéralisme, la financiarisation de l’économie, la mondialisation, la révolution informatique, la hollywoodisation de l’information, la facebookisation de la communication, la googlisation du savoir …. (Visniec, 2016: 193)

The migrant characters mockingly propose “une révolution douce”—that is, “[l]a debarbelésation du monde par la migration” (Visniec, 2016: 193, 194). As Visniec explains in “Note d’intention,” this is “[une révolution] du ‘repartage de l’accès au bonheur dans le monde’” (2016: 12). ⁵ With his vision of a world where all are entitled to good fortune and in which migration is a leveling force, Visniec bypasses the uneven relationship between benefactors and aid beneficiaries that humanitarianism has been criticized for reinforcing. He moves the discussion from Europe's moral imperative to welcome migrants to Europe's debt to the world and responsibility for today's large-scale migrations.

The notion of Europe's responsibility for perpetrating violence on the Global South, whether via colonialism or globalization, recalls Pascal Bruckner’s (1986) The Tears of the White Man, which criticized leftist European intellectuals for blaming “the West” for colonialism and uncritically extolling the “Third World.” Bruckner argued that white guilt and compassion were ultimately self-serving. Despite blaming themselves, Third-Worldists continued to view themselves as the center of the world and, as a result, perpetuated the unequal relationship between the West and its former colonies. Like Bruckner, Visniec puts forward the notion of guilt by alluding to Europe's responsibility for its economic model gone awry and its corollary—deep global inequality. Visniec describes this inequality as “une injustice pour laquelle les inspirateurs de ce modèle, les Occidentaux, doivent aujourd’hui acquitter l’addition” (2016: 12). Visniec implies that time has come for Europe to repay its debt not so much by opening its borders to millions of refugees, but by rethinking its globalization model. Although his play does not offer political solutions, it invites speculative thinking about how Europe's prosperity could be exported to underdeveloped areas of the globe, as he explains in an interview (qtd. in Velilla, 2017: n. pag). Casting the European migrant crisis as globalization in reverse, the play participates in an economy of guilt by drawing on economic terms such as debt and notions such as Europe's need to atone for its economic sins.

All in all, Migraaaants addresses a very timely topic, proposes an alternative view of mass migrations, and strives to impact readers-spectators affectively, through literary techniques such as dark humor and the absurd. The play's shock value was not lost on the theater companies that staged the play and the humanitarian organizations that sponsored publicity events. Judging by its numerous performances since its 2017 premiere, Migraaaants is an ideal advocacy tool since it echoes real-life spaces and events—the Calais “Jungle,” Angela Merkel's politics, the building of walls in Eastern Europe, and migrants’ burning their papers as they cross the Mediterranean—and banks on readers’ emotional reactions to a topical issue. In France, theater producers and solidarity NGOs used the play first and foremost to inform, sensitize, and move the public to action. The extensive promotional material of various French performances—such as interviews, flyers, brochures, and pedagogical files—shows that the play was mobilized as an economic and educational resource. Take fund-raising, for example. Many flyers encouraged donations, such as that of a 2018 Toulouse performance, which announced that the proceeds would go to migrants and refugees through Avocats sans frontières France and La Cimade. Consider also how performances were followed by debates and roundtables, usually in the presence of the playwright, stage director, actors, and representatives of humanitarian NGOs (La Cimade, LICRA, Amnesty International, and UNHCR). After the performances of 28–29 September 2018 at Théâtre du Cyclope in Nantes, for instance, two representatives from SOS Méditerranée and Aquarius—the only boat still saving migrants at sea at that moment—shared their testimonies with the audience. As journalist Karina Bordier put it, seeing how the successful performance was supplemented with first-hand documentary accounts gave her hope that “ce tandem théâtre et action humanitaire se réuniront de nouveau pour informer et éveiller les consciences sur le sort migratoire” (2018: n. pag.). Bordier suggests that the power of Visniec's play was enhanced when publicized by a humanitarian organization as if, considered on its own, the play would not have the same social impact. Finally, NGOs have collaborated with theater companies by inviting actors to perform for their members, thus affirming the role played by cultural productions in raising awareness of irregular migration.

When mobilizing the play as an advocacy tool, theater companies also relied on spectatorial affect to rally audiences around the cause of migrants and refugees. For example, for its 17–29 November 2016 performances, Théâtre du Chêne Noir’s (2016) pedagogical file that accompanied the flyer quoted the words that António Guterres (the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees between 2005 and 2015) had uttered on World Refugee Day (20 June 2015):

Tout laisser derrière soi, tout ce qui nous a été cher et précieux, c’est-à-dire se retrouver projeté dans un avenir incertain, un milieu étranger. Vous représentez-vous le courage qu’il faut pour vivre avec la perspective de devoir passer des mois, des années, peut-être toute une vie, en exil?

In invoking Guterres’ name as UNHCR spokesperson, Théâtre du Chêne Noir capitalized on the NGO's legitimacy in order to clue spectators in on the play's humanitarian themes. In addition, Guterres’ words deploy sentimentalism by stressing the heroism of migrants who are forced to part with their home for good. The theater company's appeal to the public's affect as a rallying tactic goes hand in hand with Visniec's goal of capturing in his play the emotional aspect of the migrant crisis, since he believes that affect allows us to better understand migration than information gleaned from the media. The messages of the play, of the theater company that put up the performance, and of the NGO that buttressed it, reinforced each other. The performance flyer alone cannot give a sense of how the play historizes present-day migrations. And Guterres’ heartfelt words, which depict migration as a spectacular feat, cannot reveal Visniec's distinctive view of migration as a universally shared condition in the near future. But together, the theater company's performance and the NGO publicity enhanced the play's already powerful content. If Migraaaants’ unsettling subject matter served as an activist resource, we will see how, in De Turckheim's case, the activist cachet of her work stems from authorship issues.

The humanitarian as Good Samarithan in Émilie de Turckheim's Le Prince à la petite tasse

Le Prince à la petite tasse narrates the author-narrator's experience of hosting a young Afghan refugee, Reza, for 9 months in her family's Parisian apartment. Written in the form of a diary, it depicts Reza's and her family's overall harmonious cohabitation through humorous anecdotes about sharing space, food, and stories as well as occasional misunderstandings. De Turckheim is a socially-implicated French novelist, having already taught English and French and animated writing workshops in prisons. As a practicing Christian, she is motivated by a desire to reduce suffering. By her own account, De Turckheim sought to help migrants after seeing their tents mushroom up under the bridges of Paris (qtd. in Baux, 2018: n. pag.), a situation she deemed unacceptable. Le Prince is the outcome of her social engagement.

Although Éditions Calmann-Lévy marketed it as a “récit,” Le Prince can be read as autofiction, since the author and the narrator share the same name and it presents De Turckheim's real-life hosting experience in a selective and fragmentary manner, following the vagaries of memory and emotion. Coined by Serge Doubrovsky (1977) in his novel Fils, “l’autofiction est l’alliance d’une matière autobiographique et d’une manière romanesque” (Tadié and Cerquiglini, 2012: 359). At stake in autofictional accounts is the representation of authorial identity. In addition, de Turckheim's challenge is how to portray her relationship to a disadvantaged refugee without falling into the white savior complex or the sensationalist tropes of migrant literature (war-torn countries, perilous border crossings, etc.). Aware of their unequal status, Émilie the narrator treads tactfully around her guest. She does not pressure Reza into revealing his sorrowful past, respecting his right to privacy, such that the refugee remains partially legible to us. Le Prince paints a picture of the French host, much more than of the refugee guest. The autofictional reading lens is important because it directs readers’ attention to the author's humanitarian stance.

Le Prince offers a compelling model of humanitarian action by focusing on the relationship between host and guest. In an interview, De Turckheim admits that, when the guest is an Afghan, “le vrai défi a été de ne pas le voir comme un drame vivant,” as humanitarian organizations sometimes depict refugees, but as an asylee with legal papers and a rightful place in France, who can teach her family about his culture (qtd. in Pitard, 2018: n. pag.). For instance, as Reza cooks Afghan dinners for his French family, he becomes the host and they the guests: “Nous sommes l’hôte de Reza qui est notre hôte” (De Turckheim, 2018: 48). In French, hôte means both “host” and “guest.” Through these interchangeable terms, the author-narrator seeks to downplay her family's humanitarian action. Despite their efforts to be welcoming, they realize that “Reza est sans famille,” forever severed from his homeland, mother, and native tongue (De Turckheim, 2018: 76). They are not Reza's saviors; they can offer him only temporary shelter.

In contrast to this provisional shelter, literary works can offer complete refuge to migrants. Le Prince is not only a chronicle of everyday life, but also a metatextual reflection on literature's capacity to accommodate marginalized subjects. A specific instance of racism prompts the author-narrator to ponder the question of hospitality: “Pourquoi accueillir des migrants dans notre pays, dans notre maison? […] Parce que nous croyons que l’Europe existe encore” (De Turckheim, 2018: 160). She expounds on “ce nous-européen” by imagining a lively conversation between a few pieces of wood floating in a river, which stands for today's climate of racism engulfing a minority of liberal-minded citizens (De Turckheim, 2018: 161, original emphasis). In a final act of resistance, the wooden pieces swim to the shore and decide to build a shed “[p]our accueillir toute la misère du monde” (De Turckheim, 2018: 162). As an imaginary place, “[l]a cabane est le Haut Lieu Poétique. Quiconque habite la cabane est pris dans le rêve d’Europe. Pour vivre dans la cabane, il suffit d’être de bonne volonté” (De Turckheim, 2018: 162, original emphasis). As the text suggests, one needs a can-do attitude to embrace an inclusive vision of Europe and withstand present-day xenophobia. Metatextually, Le Prince represents this “Haut Lieu Poétique.” By representing literary texts as hospitable spaces, De Turckheim risks instrumentalizing literature as a site of imaginary accommodation that is lacking in real life for migrants and refugees. However, she may strategically invest literature with the power to remind readers of the European values of freedom, inclusiveness, and resistance to oppression—a historical memory that is absent in current political discourses about migration. These values hark back to international documents such as the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 1951 Geneva Convention on the Status of Refugees, which safeguard human rights in general as well as refugees’ right to seek asylum when fleeing persecution. Émilie the narrator is moved to tears when Reza shows her his “Titre de voyage pour personne réfugiée,” which contains on each page the words “Convention de Genève de 1951” (De Turckheim, 2018: 83). For her, reading these words “[c]’est comme de lire la plus transparente des poésies” (De Turckheim, 2018: 83). One could easily criticize such passages for their maudlin tone, but sentimentalism is an effective tool in awakening readers’ compassion. However, those passages also point to specific European legislation and, as such, suggest we transcend pity to consider the legal rights of refugees.

This is a shift that literary critic Marielle Macé (2017) proposed in her essay about migration and social justice, Sidérer, considérer. It takes as its starting point Macé's shock when she spotted a migrant encampment in a central Parisian neighborhood and realized that migrants remain invisible despite their presence in our midst. Macé argues that this shock—sidérer—should be followed by thinking hard about—considérer—our political and juridical tasks: to welcome migrants as equals in legal terms, not as humanitarian victims. As she states, “Accueillir n’est pas faire acte de charité, mais de justice: il s’agit de réparer le tort subi par ceux que l’histoire expulse” (Macé, 2017: 63). For her part, De Turckheim proceeds to the “réouverture d’un rapport, d’une proximité” (Macé 2017: 23). Although her poetics of hospitality—her vision of literature as a hospitable space for migrants—does not easily translate into a politics of justice, she feels personally responsible as a citizen. Specifically, De Turckheim views hospitality as an act of grassroots opposition to the government's ineffectual immigration policies and as an individual contribution to society that is personally rewarding:

Accueillir quelqu’un est une forme d’action, une toute petite action qui ne va pas changer la société mais tout de même une résistance face à ce qui est fait ou plutôt pas suffisamment fait par le gouvernement actuellement. Je trouve que c’est une façon douce et riche de s’engager. (Samusocial Paris, 2017: n. pag.)

In her view, social commitment is the only viable option for citizens who, like her, may feel “accablé[s]” and “impuissant[s]” when confronted with refugees’ difficult circumstances, and who ask themselves “Mais que fait-on?” (qtd. in Pitard, 2018: n. pag.). Significantly enough, this Good Samaritan attitude earned Le Prince the 2019 Prix littéraire de la FNABEH—an acronym for the Fédération des Associations de Bibliothèques et Établissements Hospitaliers, a group of 60 associations that operate in hundreds of hospitals by making books available to patients. A minor literary award, unlike the major prizes of the French rentrée littéraire, it rewards not so much literary aesthetics as individual engagement, self-sacrifice, and altruism. For the jury of the Prix littéraire de la FNABEH, the merit of Le Prince is that it focuses on an individual citizen's action, modeling for readers what cohabitation with a refugee might look like.

De Turckheim has not carried out her project on her own, but under the supervision of Le Samu Social de Paris, a French solidarity organization that has provided shelter and medical aid to homeless persons since 1993 and, beginning in 2015, to asylees. In 2016, in response to French citizens’ expressions of interest in hosting refugees, Samu created the program “Elan,” which pairs citizens with a legalized refugee and oversees the process with the help of psychologists, social workers, and case managers. Le Prince makes a point of promoting the work of several NGOs such as the French Red Cross, whose “Trace the Face” website enables Reza to search for his missing mother; La Cimade, whose motto “Il n’y a pas d’étrangers sur cette terre” resonates deeply with the author-narrator (De Turckheim, 2018: 47); and Le Samu Social, “[qui] peine à trouver des Parisiens prêts à héberger des réfugiés” (De Turckheim, 2018: 69). Le Prince thus raises awareness about humanitarian NGOs’ programs and highlights opportunities for citizen engagement.

As a moving story of humanitarian action, Le Prince lends itself to instrumentalization by activist NGOs. Small wonder that Samu has incorporated the book in its promotional materials. On its website, under the rubric “Agir avec nous,” Samu lists interviews with, and testimonies by, host families as well as the refugees they have received as guests (Samusocial Paris, 2018: n. pag.). Their comments usually revolve around negotiating cultural differences and the refugees’ social and professional integration thanks to these volunteers. In her own interview on the website, De Turckheim comments positively on “Elan,” which has enabled her to meet an individual with a unique life story and to oppose an anti-immigration political climate. Samu highlights the entrepreneurial spirit of citizens like her through questions intimating that investing in their program yields personal benefits: “Que vous a apporté le programme Elan?”; “Qu’est-ce que cette expérience vous apporte?”; “Vous avez pu découvrir sa vie?” (Samusocial Paris, 2017: n. pag.). De Turckheim's answers reveal that “Elan” enabled her to change her own perceptions about refugees, as she came to realize that “une personne, ça n’est pas un flux migratoire” (Samusocial Paris, 2017: n. pag.). “Elan” thus promises a person-to-person connection that is personally transformative and culturally enriching, however problematic the notion of a migrant subject enriching a French citizen's life may be. Samu instrumentalizes the writer's testimony to increase civic participation in their program.

Samu also draws attention to the author's fictional work with the same aim. At the end of the interview, an update informs that she has published a book, Le Prince à la petite tasse, which bears witness to her experience of hosting a refugee. It adds that “Ce magnifique journal est un vrai support pour les futurs accueillants. N’hésitez-pas à le découvrir” (Samusocial Paris, 2017: n. pag.). Ironically, life imitates literature. Samu mobilizes a literary work to move French citizens to action. For the NGO, Le Prince functions as a “how-to” guide that offers insights into hosting refugees and partnering with Samu. While stressing the activist knowledge that the text produces, Samu overlooks the fact that Le Prince is an autofictional account—a genre that fictionalizes autobiographical elements but is meant to be read outside of criteria of truthfulness and accuracy. The NGO converts the book's aesthetic value into social value, promoting it as a user's manual for enacting hospitality. Samu's stressing the utilitarian value of the literary work may stem from the way it views refugees—not only as individuals with a unique trajectory, as De Turckheim does, but also as resources in need of management through shelter creation (placement with a family and social integration) and the formation of socially engaged citizens (future participants in their program). For Samu, Le Prince is expedient inasmuch as it leads prospective volunteers to share the burden of social services. Literary texts and institutions, although sharing the same agenda, may differ in their understanding of what literature can accomplish socially and discursively. But the story of how De Turckheim and Samu Social worked in tandem to engage the public in humanitarian causes illustrates how literary works can be used as cultural resources that may improve the lives of refugees.

In this essay I have sought to understand how literary works about migration stand in relation to both the French literary field and the humanitarian field. I have argued that literary works need to sit alongside the work of solidarity NGOs in order to more forcefully open up a space for debate and, in the best of cases, enable migrants’ integration in France. They make ideal cultural and economic resources that extend into activism because they engage with societal and political debates of their time and advocate a humanitarian attitude towards vulnerable others. Although this article was concerned with literature, its argument could be extended to other cultural forms, such as cinema, and to other practices of solidarity, such as cultural events. It is worth noting that, starting in 2009, La Cimade has organized Migrant'scène, a politically engaged film festival dedicated to migrant themes. Furthermore, in 2019, journalist Julia Montfort was inspired by her experience of hosting a refugee to create a YouTube channel, “Carnets de Solidarité,” which encourages citizens’ solidarity with migrants and refugees. Individual expressions of solidarity as well as collaborations between literary texts, cultural institutions, and humanitarian organizations are ongoing phenomena, which deserve to be further explored—in other media and linguistic traditions, as well.