#  The City and the Claim: Mapping African Asylum-Seeking in Paris 

 



This project examined the spatial and institutional trajectories of African asylum-seekers in the Paris metropolitan area. Over the course of the grant period (especially over winter break 2026), I conducted a preliminary 45-minute oral-history interview with a Senegalese asylum-seeker and established connections with community organizations serving displaced populations, including Utopia56. I also carried out exploratory archival research at the Archives nationales and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France - Richelieu in Paris to better understand the historical and administrative frameworks that structure contemporary asylum procedures. Together, these activities allowed me to investigate how asylum-seekers navigate a fragmented urban landscape composed of reception centers, legal institutions, social-service providers, transportation networks, and community organizations.

A central outcome of the project was the creation of a preliminary map identifying key sites in the Parisian asylum infrastructure, including OFPRA, the CNDA, SPADA Ney, France Terre d’Asile, the Maison des Réfugiés, and other institutional and community actors. The map highlights the extent to which asylum-seeking is experienced through movement across multiple urban nodes rather than through a single administrative pathway. Preliminary findings suggest that the asylum process produces a distinctive geography of mobility, requiring repeated navigation between dispersed bureaucratic, legal, and social spaces concentrated largely in northeastern Paris and the inner banlieue. In contrast, the trajectories documented through this project rarely overlap with the southwestern sectors of the capital, home to many of Paris's most internationally recognizable sites and symbols of national sovereignty, including the Champs-Élysées and Arc de Triomphe (8th arrondissement), the National Assembly and Eiffel Tower (7th arrondissement), and the Louvre (1st arrondissement). This spatial divide highlights the existence of multiple, unevenly experienced urban geographies within the same city. For many asylum-seekers, mostly African, Paris is encountered less through its monumental landmarks than through a network of reception centers, administrative offices, legal clinics, transportation hubs, and community organizations that structure everyday life while their claims are under review.

The project also laid the groundwork for a broader program of research on LGBTQ+ African refugees in Paris, which I will pursue during the 2026–27 academic year in partnership with two local NGOs: ARDHIS and Melting Point. By combining legal anthropology, archival research, and spatial analysis, this work continues to explore how displacement, urban space, and institutional infrastructures shape the lived experiences of refugees and asylum-seekers in contemporary France. The HMUI grant provided critical support for the development of this research agenda and for the initial mapping of the city-wide networks through which asylum-seeking unfolds. The mapping component will continue to be expanded as part of ongoing dissertation research on LGBTQ+ African refugees in Paris.

   ![Atim M.](/sites/g/files/omnuum10471/files/styles/hwp_1_1__960x960_scale/public/2026-07/African%20Asylum-Seeking%20Trajectories%20in%20Paris.jpg?itok=na0Jv5Ao) 

 

Grant Recipient: Atim Fiore Mackin