‘Breathing spaces’ in Marseille: the spatialisation of desires against urban capitalism

Prologue: constraints and desires

It was very hot in Marseille the summer of 2023; the long heatwave was unbearable in the concrete jungle. It made our topic of conversation, pollution, particularly palpable.

The story I’d like to tell you begins like this:

During the initial interviews [1] the terms “toxic”, “toxicity” and “pollution” caused some confusion, sometimes due to translation issues. I then asked broader questions and began to paraphrase by asking what they considered unpleasant, harmful, problematic or dangerous in their everyday environment, for themselves, their loved ones, or simply for others. I also asked them about places where they felt good, comfortable, safe and healthy, and what they would like to change in their living environment, their neighbourhood or their city. I also encouraged them to compare other places they knew in terms of water quality, air quality, green spaces, housing and neighbourhoods. They all told me about the lack of shade, the stifling heat, their difficulty in accessing the sea, the need for green spaces, but also the unsanitary conditions of their housing, the logic of gentrification, the administrative difficulties in accessing medical and social assistance, and their desire to move to the countryside.

Most residents therefore spoke of social inequalities and their link to pollution exposure, which in the American tradition is referred to as environmental injustice (Bullard, 2000) [2]

The central issue addressed in the Marseille interviews is the inability to access certain places considered pleasant, mainly green spaces and coastal areas, particularly because many are privately owned. This raises the issue of the “commodification” of space, i.e. the process by which something that was not considered a commodity (an exchangeable economic good) is transformed into a product or service that can be bought, sold or exchanged on a market. This process accentuates the relegation of the most vulnerable people to less desirable environments in the urban market: places where, for example, they may suffer various climatic injustices such as heat islands (see maps by Cedric Rossi and Philippe Rivière), or spaces where people are more exposed to toxic molecules (CEVESO sites [3])...

We can therefore talk about environmental injustices in the sense that various factors, such as class, race and/or gender, influence the degree of exposure to different forms of pollution (toxic chemical molecules), but also to a range of nuisances, such as noise pollution and distance from various necessary amenities (food, health, leisure, etc.).William Acker’s book Where are the “travellers”?, accompanied by an interactive map, clearly shows the link between social inequalities (in this case anti-Roma racism), environmental injustices and the phenomenon of spatial segregation – since areas for travellers are quite often located in spaces that are significantly polluted and far from or outside cities.

In the interviews I conducted in Marseille, when these nuisances were mentioned, they were most often described as a lack of choice, or the result of various constraints that limit residents’ ability to find forms of well-being and restrict their occupation of the city to certain areas. Emmeline, a resident of L’Estaque whose grandmother died of asbestos-related cancer, puts it this way:

I am regularly afraid of living in relative poverty and how it influences my life, in the sense, for example, of the choice of neighbourhoods where I live, the housing I accept to live in... And I’m afraid of environmental insecurity, of having to live next to highly polluted areas and having a significant impact on my health... »

Faced with these responses, I had to shift the focus of the interviews: it was less a question of seeking a direct perception of pollution linked to toxic molecules than of asking myself what overall perception of their living environment the inhabitants of the city centre (broadly speaking, the 1^st, 5^th and 6^th arrondissements), Belle de Mai (3^rd arrondissement) and Les Rosiers (14^th arrondissement) have. Despite their differences, these can be described as three working-class neighbourhoods [4] and that they have poorer air quality than other neighbourhoods in the city[Map "Is your child breathing polluted air?" published by Greenpeace France. Data collected by AtmoSud ].

What I initially thought were translation issues in the interviews ultimately proved to be an asset, allowing me to move beyond a narrow perspective to describe an embodied approach to ecology in the context of urban capitalism as experienced in Marseille.

This change in perspective on the perception of pollution echoes Michelle Murphy’s (2017) call to find appropriate methodologies for research on these topics. It is not just a question of describing and quantifying the effects of pollution through a scientific lens that encourages us to look at molecules, as this approach has its limitations in terms of understanding the social world (Liboiron et al., 2018).

From an ecofeminist and decolonial perspective, Michelle Murphy suggests that we broaden our thinking by asking ourselves what are the appropriate ways to describe life in toxic environments, in order to develop an appropriate ethic:

How can we reject the idea that chemicals are autonomous entities, while avoiding “replaying” body-centric narratives of suffering? […] This task of generating alternative concepts of care and responsibility could be accomplished by calling forth alternative modes of collaboration and study that simultaneously aim at world-building and dismantlement. »

Michelle Murphy, 2017, p.496.

And this is where the connection between the constraints experienced by the respondents and the expression of their desires becomes apparent. By asking residents what they would like to change about their living environment, the dual question of “building the world and dismantling it” is addressed. Asking residents about their living environment effectively allowed them to express the desires they feel through their daily experience of these spaces.

This echoes the caution taken by Eve Tuck in her article Suspending damage: a letter to communities (2019): rather than emphasising passivity and powerlessness in the face of injustices suffered, she invites researchers to consider both the constraints and the desires expressed by residents. In doing so, she opposes approaches focused on harm which, based on a theory of change, consider that the accumulation of evidence serves above all to represent certain communities as victims in order to obtain redress.

Eve Tuck asks: “Are the wins worth the long-term costs of thinking of ourselves as damaged?” So, as an “antidote” to social sciences that encourage counting pain and suffering to describe certain lives, she advocates for collaborative, desire-based research, according to the interpretation given by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari [5], she advocates for a true “epistemological reversal”:

Exponentially generative, engaged, engorged, desire is not mere wanting but our informed seeking. Desire is both the part of us that hankers for the desired and at the same time the part that learns to desire. It is closely tied to, or may even be, our wisdom. »

Eve Tuck, 2019, p.418.

During the interviews conducted in Marseille, this prism allowed me to let the residents’ words flow freely, to talk about environmental injustices without neglecting “the good life” for everyone: how we imagine it, how we want it, how we take it. Without assuming that these situations are identified in the same way by everyone, this text aims above all to give voice to various attempts to define toxicity, in the words of those who suffer the consequences of “toxic policies” (Liboiron et al, 2018) on a daily basis. The spatialisation of these definitions of toxicity – the constraints, but also the desires and associated with them – is made possible by experiential maps: these highlight the reflexive knowledge that city dwellers have of their city, as they reveal the emotions they feel in response to their everyday environment, thus projecting forces of transformation, sometimes contradictory – because desire, as a theoretical concept, “interrupts the binary of reproduction versus resistance.” (Tuck, 2019, p.419).

Breaking out of a binary framework here means that I have attempted to describe the interviewees by taking into account the contradictions they expressed: they are neither victims nor absolute resisters. Questioning the desires of residents also complicates their perception of toxicity: it is no longer just a question of asking what is lost, altered or deficient, but also what motivates people to make decisions, based on the values and histories they encounter; all elements that shape the way we perceive, understand and act in the face of toxicity. Moving beyond this false opposition between passivity and resistance also means recognising the impossibility of purity in a toxic world (Rios Sandoval, 2026): we can neither become completely intoxicated if we want to continue living, nor can we get rid of it completely – and this also applies, by extension, to life in a world that produces environmental inequalities, which exposes us to varying degrees of pollution. To speak of contradictory desires in this context is to allow at the same time the expression of the desire to be part of this world, the absence of choice, the absence of solutions, the persistence of struggles – all of which may sometimes appear as inconsistencies in people’s journeys or discourses if we seek to categorise these archetypes by their opposition.

“Slow violence” and “slow activism”:

In most environmental research projects, the ravages of pollution are counted or described, particularly sensational events, leaving aside what Rob Nixon calls, by contrast, a “slow disaster” (2011), i.e. an “almost imperceptible process that characterises the contemporary toxic condition of the world” and which operates through “slow violence” that makes it invisible:

Gradually, and out of sight, a violence of delayed destruction spread across time and space, an erosive violence that is generally not perceived as violence at all. »

Rob Nixon, 2011, p.2.

Rob Nixon’s invisible violence is only invisible if we understand environmental damage as disasters, or even as a certain image of the apocalypse: mega-fires, hurricanes, highly toxic factory explosions, babies born with deformities, premature deaths... However, since pollution is most often gradual, it has slower effects that can go unnoticed, as they shape a new normality, new forms of life altered by toxicity. But this is no less “violence” according to Rob Nixon - which forces us to redefine violence itself.

In 2022, Thom Davies revisits this concept, and the entire field of research he helped to establish, in the article Slow violence and toxic geographies: ’Out of sight’ to whom?. He argues that if “slow violence” is invisible, it is because of “epistemic violence” (Spivak, 1988) which renders inaudible the expertise of those most affected, those who experience toxic violence on a daily basis.

I argue that slow violence is not necessarily ’out of sight’ (Nixon, 2011: 2) to the people it impacts, but can instead be made knowable through what I term ’slow observations’ (Davies 2018: 1549). I suggest it is the gradual velocity of slow violence that makes this informal expertise possible. »

Thom Davies, 2022, p.411.

Referring to the concept of “slow disaster”, Manuel Tironi (2018) proposes research on “slow activism” or “intimate activism”, a form of action focused on militant and ethical commitment rather than on the pursuit of effectiveness:

This is the type of ethical response to pervasive chemical harm that emerges through domestic practices of care and that situates politics at the intersection between passiveness and action, coping and contesting, reclusion and mobilisation, feeling and knowing. »

Manuel Tironi, 2018.

The type of actions highlighted by the residents of Marseille interviewed for the Embodied Ecologies project can be seen as a form of “slow activism” in response to toxic, slowly erosive violence.

This slow activism is linked to what Max Liboiron, Manuel Tironi and Nerea Calvillo call “toxic politics” (2018): a concept that highlights the political dimension of actions guided by an intimate knowledge of everyday toxicity. They invite us to think about environmental struggles outside of political movements legitimised by power structures and modes of knowledge that rely solely on science as a measure. This echoes Michelle Murphy’s (2017) call to consider other forms of action and discourse on toxicity:

Legibility through recognition, whether through sensational images or otherwise, carries with it the inherent risk of reproducing forms of politics that maintain the distinction between centre and periphery, between those who are heard and those who are not, and between "the forms of life supported to persist, thrive, and alter, and those that are destroyed, injured, and constrained. » (Murphy, 2017).

Max Liboiron, Manuel Tironi and Nerea Calvillo, 2018.

In the wake of these theoretical and methodological proposals, I agree that those who experience toxic violence on a daily basis are best placed to talk about it. That is why I chose to interview people who did not a priori express an explicit interest in environmental issues but who live in polluted neighbourhoods of Marseille, allowing them to define for themselves what they considered to be toxic in their daily lives.

Fatima, one of the first people I met during my fieldwork in Marseille, convinced her two friends Omar and Nadia to make an appointment with me for an interview, telling them that “you have to tell the truth [to researchers]”. In doing so, she was not encouraging them to answer my questions, but rather to speak up. I understood Fatima’s words as an invitation to remain attentive.

For Fabienne Cavaillé, who works on “geographical emotions” (2016), these are “motivated and conditioned by higher norms and values”, in particular ethical assessments that "relate to definitions of right and wrong, good, beauty, good and evil [6]". The answers therefore require us to understand toxicity in relational terms, as proposed by Michelle Murphy (2017), i.e. to link the concrete experience of bodies to the different forms of politics pursued to inhabit pollution (Gramaglia, 2023). The political horizon of a relational approach to toxicity is that of true reproductive justice, based on a deeply unequal contemporary condition that stems from post-colonial capitalism:

When we talk about toxic politics, we are referring to reproductive justice: ’the struggle for the collective conditions necessary for the preservation of life and its persistence over time in the face of life-denying structural forces, and not just the right to have or not have children. Reproductive justice is thus inseparable from environmental justice, anti-racism, and anti-colonialism. »

Murphy, 2017, p.142 in Liboiron et al., 2018

Spaces to breathe

So, to answer the question posed by Liboiron et al. (2018) - “what forms of action come to both describe and engender living in a permanently and unevenly toxic world?” (What forms of action contribute to both describing and shaping the experience of living in a permanently and unevenly toxic world?), most of the residents surveyed responded that they seek forms of compensation, balance or escape.

This is what Anaïs, a city centre resident, calls “breathing spaces”: she uses this metaphor to refer to any space or activity that allows her to feel good when she feels “suffocated”.

For her, breathing is a place, a sound or even a vision that gives her a sense of well-being in a living environment that she finds “degraded”:

You can be in a tiny flat, something that’s not very pleasant for one reason or another; you have trees: immediately, you have a breathing space. »

She then talks about the effort required to find these places to breathe, which become a way of anchoring herself in her living environment:

Obviously, a space, a city or a village, where you live, the environment you occupy, doesn’t really matter (to a certain extent, of course)... whatever the environment, it’s also about how you take ownership of that environment. »

I will now use her expression to describe spaces or activities mentioned by other respondents, to describe what it is like to live in a toxic world, in this case in Marseille. I do not wish to give the impression that this search for balance is the only response envisaged by the people interviewed or the groups to which they belong, nor even that it can compensate for the violences of necropolitics (Mbembe, 2006). Rather, the aim is to suggest that these “breathing strategies” are better suited to describing different ways of “living with” pollution, and that this is one way of practising and fighting against toxic politics. In a world described as one of no choice, both because it is impossible to live outside of toxicity today (Liboiron et al., 2018; Mandler, Rios Sandoval, Tan, Hardon, 2025 [7]), and because postcolonial capitalism structurally determines that some lives matter more than others (Dorlin, 2018), the search for compensation or balance is as much a strategy for struggle as it is for life. This is what Michelle Murphy calls “alterlife” (Altervie [8]):

The concept of alterlife encompasses impure and altered forms of life, pessimistically acknowledging ongoing violence, living within and against the worlds that technoscience has helped to shape. Alterlife is resurgent life, which asserts and continues nonetheless. »

Michelle Murphy, 2017.

In Marseille the question that guided me during the interviews took on an immediately graspable meaning under the blazing sun: “How to sustain life in a toxic world?”. This is the question posed by Mariana Rios Sandoval (2026), drawing on a long genealogy of feminist work on reproduction as an embodied process and analytical category, when she seeks to think about the effects of pollution and the possibilities for remediation, outside of a discourse of purity and outside of an individual understanding of the issue. Instead, she attempts to approach it as a question of socio-ecological reproduction, in which vital bodily, ecological and social processes are inseparable because they are entangled and interdependent.

Michelle Murphy also raises epistemological issues by seeking to escape the molecular and individual prism that usually underpins research on pollution. On the contrary, she calls for a relational view of toxic substances, but also of the environments and beings that are transformed by them:

How can we find words capable of undoing the hegemonic meaning attributed to chemical molecules and life — words capable of confronting the diffuse but persistent condition of a living existence altered by chemical substances? A condition that is both shared and unevenly experienced, which divides us as much as it binds us, and which extends colonialism and racism into the intergenerational future. »

Michelle Murphy, 2017, p.497.

In the Embodied Ecologies project, in order to find other ways of describing the conditions of everyday life, those who wished to do so were also able to draw a sensory map. I suggested drawing a map after the interviews to represent some of the places, themes or emotions addressed during the discussion.

These maps show ways of “living somewhere”, as Anaïs puts it. They also highlight the inequalities in access to the “breathing spaces” identified by each participant.

This search for accessible commons therefore appears to be an important counterpoint to exposure to toxicity, and represents a challenge for the collective struggles mentioned in the interviews (the struggle to maintain access to an undeveloped green space, to convert wasteland in a neighbourhood into market gardens, to gain access to a private park, to empty housing in the city, etc.).

The desires for change that emerged through the shortcomings expressed thus form an “improved Marseille”, as Anaïs calls it in the caption to her map. These desires also depend on the points of comparison that residents have experienced, depending on their life or migration history – some of these places “outside Marseille” also appear on the maps and unfold the space there.

1 - Nadia and Fatima: horizontal life, vertical life

On 5 November 2018, the collapse of buildings 63 and 65 on Rue d’Aubagne, in the Noailles district, caused the deaths of eight people. Thousands of eviction notices were subsequently issued for other buildings in the city centre. [9] By coincidence, this article is being written in the midst of the trial of those responsible for these collapses. [For a detailed account, see the report produced by the members of Collectif 5 novembre, civil parties and spokespersons for those affected by the collapses and their aftermath.]] a trial awaited by the families of the victims, the residents affected by the evictions and the associations acting as civil parties [10], as it highlights the problem of substandard housing in Marseille. The collapse of Rue d’Aubagne is part of Marseille’s collective memory [11] and therefore appears in many of the interviews conducted for this research; sometimes it is simply an implication, in which I am taken to task as a resident of the city. Many of us have been evacuated, know someone who has been evacuated, or are afraid of being evacuated.

The concepts of unfitness for habitation and danger are theoretically separate: a building is considered dangerous when it threatens to collapse, while unfitness for habitation refers to a danger to the health of its inhabitants. In reality, these phenomena often occur together. This issue came up repeatedly in the interviews as a representation of a form of diffuse toxicity.

The issue of poor housing therefore appears to be central to environmental inequalities, as it creates, through the privatisation of space, increasing difficulties in finding decent housing: the 2019 report by the High Committee for the Housing of Disadvantaged People [12] even titled its report Marseille, from housing crisis to humanitarian crisis. This report analyses the “housing crisis of 2018-2019” following the collapse of Rue d’Aubagne, and highlights in particular the increase in private housing stock in recent years and the lack of social housing.

I met Nadia, a resident of Belle de Mai (3^rd arrondissement), in a lively neighbourhood bar on market day. Nadia is a member of CHO3, the Collectif des Habitants Organisés du 3ème arrondissement (Collective of Organised Residents of the 3^rd arrondissement). This collective “fights against the injustices experienced by residents and defends their interests” according to their own definition [13]. The collective focuses in particular on access to rights, the fight against substandard housing, but also the organisation of training courses, cultural events and workshops, organised in various committees. Nadia puts it this way:

The aim of the collective is for people to become empowered, to take action themselves, not to wait for someone else to do it for them. It’s about empowerment. »

She reminds me that many of the neighbourhood’s homes are unsanitary, particularly due to mould, which she believes is caused by humidity in the neighbourhood and causes numerous respiratory problems, especially for children:

There are lots of people who still live in very dilapidated housing, but who can’t afford to pay more. What could change things would be social housing. But systematically, even though these are people with children, teenagers, they are offered housing in the northern neighbourhoods, you see? […]

I don’t care, I’ll stay in dilapidated housing, I’m not putting my children in danger over there. »

She talks to me about the fear caused by drug networks, but also, in contrast, about the many advantages of living in La Belle de Mai: there are two main squares (Place Caffo and Place Cadenas, mentioned in several interviews as pleasant places), a few green spaces, a market three times a week that attracts a lot of people, cultural venues and numerous associations. This is why CHO3 requested the right to respond to an article in La Provence entitled “In Belle de Mai, poverty breeds violence” (12 October 2024).

The collective wanted to respond to these disparaging stereotypes: “The organisations mentioned, including those that coordinate the Fête de la Belle de Mai, do not recognise themselves in this article, nor in the vision of the neighbourhood that it presents” [Excerpt from the collective’s internal WhatsApp group, in preparation for the response article, November 2024]], echoing the frustration expressed by Eve Tuck in her letter against damage-based research (Tuck, 2019).

The collective also attempts to address poor housing issues collectively, by uniting isolated tenants against their landlords, seeking solutions to treat bedbugs, which are very common in the neighbourhood - and the city in general - or by offering free humidity tests.

Nadia is involved in the “food security” branch of CHO3, which organised the distribution of food parcels during lockdown and is pushing the local council to allow access to the few vacant lots in the neighbourhood for market gardening or planting trees - which is currently working in the Levat garden, thanks in particular to women who worked in agriculture in their country of origin. During her interview, in the scorching heat, Nadia talks about the lack of green spaces, but above all the lack of shade and coolness, especially for children:

— Magdaleine: Are there many trees here in the neighbourhood?

— Nadia: A few, there aren’t many. There’s Levat as a garden [14], but there aren’t many. At La Friche [15] There are no green spaces with trees... There is also a small square at National [16]. But it’s behind the buildings, you know, there are still a lot of gardens, but you should know that, there are a lot of gardens and trees, especially trees [...] but it’s not enough, there aren’t enough. You know, most families with children either go to the wasteland to ride their bikes or they go to Longchamp [17]Because National isn’t very big, and when it’s very hot, there aren’t enough trees to provide shade, because they’re only just starting to grow.

Nadia reminds me that in Marseille, the system historically used to regulate heat is to plant trees in the inner courtyards of buildings. This system still exists in some courtyards but also contributes to the privatisation of green spaces, as they are not accessible to everyone.

I drew this map following my conversation with Nadia, showing the spaces she mentioned.

The dark green areas are shaded parks, and the light green areas are parks or children’s play areas without shade. Several protests have been held to preserve parks, without success: she mentions the Porte d’Aix and the Chantereine residence. Nadia also tells me about the tunnel that marks the entrance to the 3^rd arrondissement as a “border” (it is this tunnel that Pierre, in another interview, calls “the stinking tunnel” because it is a long, noisy and dark tunnel due to the smoke that has settled on the walls):

It clearly separates the centre, and then you start... Belle de Mai is the boundary, the border between neighbourhoods, as they say. After that, the neighbourhoods begin. So it has a special status because of that."

The only beach that is more or less easily accessible from the north of Marseille is Corbières, shown on the map.

Otherwise, the other beaches are to the south, stretching as far as the Calanques, scrubland with little shade, but the residents of Belle de Mai don’t go there much, says Nadia:

I think it’s too far for them, and you have to take transport, so it costs money. Maybe it’s the fact that... they’re not used to walking, hiking, all that. I know that last summer and the summer before, the collective organised picnics in the Calanques to show people around and familiarise them with the area.

Médiapart, in an article by Mickaël Correia and Donatien Huet, “Climate inequalities: how the rich monopolise green spaces”, published a set of very telling maps produced by Cédric Rossi on thermal inequalities in urban areas.

These maps show the correlation between thermal and economic inequalities in Marseille, as we can see graphically the superimposition of these differences between the north and south of the city.

The 2019 report by the High Committee for the Housing of Disadvantaged People [18], pointing to the increase in private housing stock, also highlights one of the causes of growing environmental inequalities. The privatisation of certain parts of the city is also symptomatic of the commodification of commons, as beaches, courtyards, brownfield sites, parks, residences and even entire neighbourhoods are becoming private and restricting access to these spaces.

Most of these gated communities are located in the south, where temperatures are “normal”, while in the north they are “average”, “high” or “very high”.

I met Fatima in the Noailles neighbourhood (1^st arrondissement) in a café on a square. She grew up in Algiers and then came to Marseille to study in the 1970s. At the time, she lived in what she calls the "Cayolle shanty town [19] " in the south of the city, which was destroyed and whose inhabitants were forced to move to buildings in the northern districts (Fatima mentions Le Merlan, in the 14^th arrondissement, in particular).

She describes the solidarity and conviviality she observed there before it was demolished, the gardens where people had vegetable patches and fruit trees, and the life that was lived there:

And La Cayolle changed from the moment they broke up the slum, in quotation marks, when they scattered people in so-called ’drawer operations’, but which weren’t really drawers, since in fact most of them didn’t come back, they stayed in the northern districts. And that broke the kind of solidarity, the collective life that existed between different communities.

There were Roma, North Africans, Algerians, but also Pieds-Noirs, Jews from North Africa. There was a bit of everything. And everyone lived together, celebrated things, held traditional festivals together, passed around plates of food, cakes, things, stuff. There were alliances because there were marriages between Roma, Algerians and so on..."

This is what she calls “horizontal living,” as opposed to “vertical living” in the tower blocks of the northern neighbourhoods, which broke down the social structures she had witnessed. This theme recurs often in her discourse, as she praises the places where she has lived: Marseille, Algiers, Noailles and La Cayolle.

— Magdaleine: Do you ever go back to the northern neighbourhoods? Do you still have contacts there? Do you know if the atmosphere and solidarity you talk about in La Cayolle still exist there?

— Fatima: No, because life in apartment buildings is not the same. A vertical life is not a horizontal life. People don’t bother each other in the same way, the interferences are not the same... I mean, before, in La Cayolle, they might have had a house with water leaks, which wasn’t very sturdy, etc., but they also had a small garden with fruit trees that they had planted, and so on. And they could talk to each other from house to house and so on. It’s not the same. In fact, the thing about Lévi-Strauss that was well understood by the colonisers here was, “You destroy a village, you break down the village structures, you break down the social structures and you break down the people.” So that’s what was done.

It’s too hot everywhere because we don’t have air conditioning. I don’t have air conditioning, just a fan, which isn’t enough. That’s why we have to go outside for a walk. The children want to go for a walk all the time: “Mummy, we have to go for a walk.” I say no, we have to stay in. They say no, no, no. I have no choice, they see people outside."

Then she tells me about the park in the middle of the buildings, arranged around a courtyard with dry, patchy grass at this time of year, littered with pieces of glass and other plastic waste, and a few rare trees:

— Magdaleine: And the park downstairs, do you ever go there?

— Sanya: No, it’s not good. The park is there, but it’s not good. [...] They pretend they’ve made a park, but it’s not nice. It’s broken because they haven’t repaired it. [...] They put in a slide , that’s all. And a few other little things, but not much. Just the slide, and they said it was a park [laughter].

— Magdaleine: If you could change it, what would you do?

— Sanya: I would do it like the park at the Merlan crossroads, because it’s a beautiful park. I would do it like this: I would put water for the children, like this, and I would put lots of toys. I would make it beautiful, beautiful! That way, the children would be calm, lying down. Because the Rosiers park isn’t beautiful.

— Magdaleine: So, what’s Merlan Park like, [...] is there shade too?

— Sanya: There are trees, yes. Sure, it’s beautiful, but it’s far from here. We can’t get back after the bus stops running: if we want to hang out, we have to take the night bus. It’s difficult, we don’t have a car, I don’t know how to drive. Can you help me learn to drive? [laughter]."

Sanya’s flat is depicted and labelled as a house inside a heart surrounded by angel wings, because she loves where she lives. Next to it, she depicts the children’s playground, which she complains about because it only has a small slide. To the left of the slide is the other playground equipment, which is broken. Below her house are the rubbish bins, which she feels are not emptied often enough and quickly overflow. Below, she depicts the sea, which she finds beautiful, and a flower next to it, representing the beauty of this beach and because she has seen plants there.

During another interview, I met Omar, who has lived in Marseille since childhood, when he arrived from Morocco with his parents. Having chaired a social welfare association for sixteen years, he makes no secret of the city’s problems, particularly in terms of inequality between neighbourhoods. As a nurse, he particularly highlights the inequality in access to healthcare between the southern and northern neighbourhoods, which he considers to be “isolated” in many ways, particularly due to a lack of transport. However, the three interviews in the Rosiers neighbourhood did not mention a lack of transport or injustice in this regard, but rather a lack of knowledge about the transport network (Thouraya), limited evening service (Amrata) or the length of the journey to the beach (Sanya).

Amrata, Sanya’s neighbour (who is helping us with translation), has been living in Les Rosiers for two months. Like Sanya, she has only been to the sea once since arriving in Marseille four years ago. She does not know the name of the beach she went to, nor the name of the bus – she explains that it was a bus organised by the town hall in the summer to go to the beach, and that she just got on it. She did not go swimming, but she found the water clean, explaining to me that the beaches in the Comoros are worse.

On her map, Amrata depicts the places she knows in Marseille: Les Rosiers and her flat in a heart, like Sanya, but she has depicted “fear” of “drugs” in large red strokes, because she heard gunshots in the courtyard, which she calls “attacks”. At the top right, she depicts La Visitation (14^th arrondissement), where she previously lived with relatives, and the Gèze metro station (15^th arrondissement), next to the flea market. This is a place that Amrata and Sanya really enjoy; they say they go there every Sunday to find cheap food, clothes and cosmetics. The flea market, run by biffins whose stalls are set up on the pavements, is threatened with eviction by the public developer Euroméditerrannée as part of a plan to redevelop the neighbourhood [22]. On her map, Amrata also draws the Netto supermarket, where she usually does her shopping, closer to her home. Sanya tells me about inflation:

Before, when you had 50 euros, you would go to Aldi and fill up a trolley. Now, you come back with one bag.

Thouraya, Sanya’s sister, and her husband Mustafa also live in Les Rosiers, but in another building at the back of the complex, which seems to me to be in worse condition than Sanya and Amrata’s: in the stairwell, fires have melted some of the materials and left the walls blackened. In their opinion, the flat they live in is in good condition, except for the leaking kitchen tap and the roller shutters in the living room, which no longer work. Their attention is mainly focused on the outside, on the courtyard, and Thouraya tells me about people who might throw objects to break their windows and squat in the flat. This is why they turn off the lights at night, for fear of being seen and having their windows broken:

Yes, I said, I’m afraid, other people will do anything, they’ll break things. Every evening, all the time, I close the curtains like this and don’t turn on the lights. In the evening, I don’t turn on the lights. Because when I turn them on, they look, [...]. They do it on purpose, they take something, they hit it: bang! They break it."

Her fear is also focused on squatters and the fact that if the flat were to be empty, others could break in, so she prefers to have someone inside all the time. The insistence with which she spoke about these fears shows that they represent a real daily anxiety.

She wants to call Pierre, from the Compagnons Bâtisseurs, to repair the electric blinds in the living room, which no longer lower, but the waiting list is long in the neighbourhood, and the budget allocated to each household is low [23] The couple do not let the children go outside alone, explaining to me that rubbish bins can be thrown out of windows and hit them on the head – which has already happened to Thouraya as she was walking through the courtyard. It is also difficult to imagine 3- and 4-year-old children playing in front of their building because the ground is littered with thousands of small pieces of glass scattered in dry, sparse grass.

But when Thouraya talks to me about cooking, her tone changes, and she tells me at length about the Comorian dishes she prepares, sometimes with other women from the building. For her, food is a source of great comfort: for example, she told me in detail and with pleasure about the recipe for a dish she particularly likes. The availability of certain specific Comorian products is also a factor in her decision to stay in Marseille: she explains that Comorians in Nice even organise themselves to send someone to Marseille to do their Ramadan shopping.

Amrata and Sanya tell me that in the Comoros they had a vegetable garden with cassava, which they often ate because they didn’t have money to buy rice. They talk about the fruit they could pick for free near their homes and exchange with their neighbours, but couldn’t sell because everyone had fruit:

There are breadfruit trees, you can pick them for free, and if you don’t have any at home, you ask your neighbour if she has pineapples, bananas, cassava, there’s everything. But there’s no money.

Sanya and Amrata also say that fruit and vegetables don’t taste the same in France because in the Comoros they are “natural” whereas in France they put “products” in them: “The taste isn’t the same, but we don’t have a choice.” When I suggested the possibility of creating a vegetable garden downstairs, in the courtyard of Les Rosiers, they laughed and replied that they would go there if there was one, but that it was up to the town hall to take care of it.

In reality, it is not the town hall that is responsible for Les Rosiers, as it is jointly owned by various agencies and private owners, who do not pay the rental charges for which they are responsible [24]. Mustapha, Thouraya’s husband, also tells me that the post office no longer delivers to the neighbourhood since the summer 2023 protests against police violence following the death of Nahel Merzouk. Residents must therefore go to the post office counter to collect their mail. He concludes:

So, you see, it’s not easy. Even the State is afraid to come here."

3 - Pierre, Émeline and Darius: the privatisation of common goods

Pierre works for Compagnons Bâtisseurs in the Rosiers neighbourhood, carrying out work requested by tenants and involving them in the process: the association "supports residents in precarious situations with the renovation of their homes. [...] Each resident receiving support participates actively in their project and thus acquires new skills [See the Compagnons Bâtisseurs website.]]". Compared to the interviews with the residents of Les Rosiers, Pierre’s description is very different: he has a professional perspective and his perception is mainly focused on the notion of risk, which he is responsible for assessing in order to mitigate it as much as possible. But he feels powerless because the resources at his disposal are limited (he only has 600 to 800 euros per dwelling):

"The person I accompanied last time was someone who spent the winter without heating, without hot water, with six broken windows – so the mistral wind blows through the property – enormous damage in the bathroom, so a lot of damp, all the walls covered in mould, the ceiling has fallen down, like there’s bare concrete on the ceiling, all the plaster has fallen off... Same thing: water damage in the kitchen, insufficient water pressure in the flat – so she can’t plug in appliances like washing machines, which is a pain – and cockroaches, bedbugs, rats... And they were really cold with two young children.

He is well aware that the problem is structural, both in terms of the Les Rosiers co-ownership and in terms of the actions of the town hall and the administrative and judicial responses of the State: the latter can place trustees who do not pay their dues (as in Les Rosiers) under supervision, but the procedures are lengthy and rarely successful. Les Rosiers, like other private co-ownerships in the northern neighbourhoods, acts as “de facto social housing”. He explains:

The housing is really run down because the owners are focused on very short-term profitability. In fact, it is the families who are trapped because there is not enough social housing in Marseille. As a result, this is the only place they can go, apart from the streets. Often, they have very few resources apart from housing benefit, so the landlords just pay themselves with the housing benefit."

Pierre lives in a squat in the 4^th arrondissement: a large, multi-storey building surrounded by a wooded park that is home to many people.

On his map, Pierre marks the private spaces that are inaccessible to him: the sea to the north of Marseille is marked with a long red line – like barbed wire, he tells me – prohibiting access to the sea where the Port Autonome de Marseille, the industrial port, its shipyards and containers are located. With the same hatched red line, he represents a privatised green space, which he gives as an example for all the others: this is the hill in the Périer district (8^th arrondissement), lined with villas and their large, private gardens with trees. Pierre recounts that when he lived there, in another squat that was evicted, he accessed the hill by climbing over the gates:

And the Périer hill is amazing because it’s almost as high as the Bonne Mère hill. So when you’re at the top, you’re in this beautiful park with lots of greenery and everything. And you have an incredible view of the whole of Marseille, the sea and everything. There are lots of beautiful green spaces, but you have to climb over gates to get there because it’s all private property! [laughter]. So I think: socialisation of green spaces [laughter]. »

His home is marked in green on the map because it is a house inside a very large park, under the pine trees: the only way to access the green spaces is by climbing over the gates, to open up living spaces or to enjoy certain areas, and to do justice to his surroundings.

In a related vein, Pierre seeks out non-commercial spaces in the city and is involved in activist projects: for example, he represents la Dar in a heart, a self-managed social centre in the city centre that hosts all the activities that its users organise collectively; El Mamba, another self-managed space that offers legal assistance and activities for migrants and exiles; and the premises of the Solidaires union. The northern neighbourhoods are depicted in grey hatching to represent concrete, and the Calanques are indicated with an arrow outside the map because they are further away and he rarely goes there. His bicycle is in the centre, allowing him to cross these spaces. La Plaine (5^th arrondissement), a square in the city centre, is represented by a heart:

Even though it’s mostly the terraces that win out (you have to buy something to sit there), I still think it’s possible to sit on the benches with a few cans and meet people, all kinds of people. So I think it’s still a place that has a certain magic about it."

In another interview, Emmeline, a resident of L’Estaque (16^th arrondissement), talks about the industrial port (the Grand Port Maritime de Marseille, formerly the Port Autonome de Marseille [25] which prevents access to the sea along a large part of the coast north of the city.

The privatisation of this part of the coast means that residents of these neighbourhoods have to travel by bus or car to Corbières (16^th arrondissement), the only accessible beach north of Marseille, before the Côte Bleue [26]. To reach Miramar, a wooded area, she also has to cross a container car park. Further on, to reach the first beach on the Côte Bleue, you have to cross a waste disposal site or climb over the train tracks.

Emmeline also says she has given up picking wild herbs and fruits in her neighbourhood, even though it was something she enjoyed, because old factories have left the soil polluted. Living close to the industrial port, with no choice but to move further away as this would mean paying much higher rent, she is aware that she is exposing herself to increased toxicity. This is what she calls “environmental precariousness”, which frightens her in the long term, as it resonates with her family history:

I used to box in a queer collective. It was outdoor boxing, and one day a venue opened up that could host the classes: it was called “The Haunted Friend” because there was asbestos in the walls. It so happens that I lost my grandmother to cancer linked to asbestos. […] And so I couldn’t stay with them because the toxicity of that little building was... I couldn’t cope with it because of my family history. […] And so, how can we, illegally, manage to find places that are not sacrificing our health? And since we always have to make do with what we have... [...] well, that leads to a slow death."

But Emmeline plans to stay in L’Estaque for the time being, because she values the social ties in her neighbourhood. Gentrification, in this context, frightens her because it would destroy these ties and the culture of the neighbourhood due to strong real estate pressures that prevent residents from becoming homeowners:

I hear a lot of people in the pub who have never become homeowners and would love to be, but who feel like they’re too late, that they didn’t act sooner, and who are afraid of seeing their bars close - because the owner, who isn’t from here, wants to sell, even though the bar is a landmark in the neighbourhood! Fear of not being able to buy property, except for new builds, fear of having to leave the neighbourhood..."

For Darius, who lives in the city centre, the search for social ties is also important, as it allows him to “live somewhere”:

Living somewhere means being part of a social fabric and, as a result, not necessarily having personal contact with the people around you, but starting to be someone to those people and those people being someone to you too. […] For example, I don’t live in the city centre, next to Cours Julien, but sometimes I feel that at the Cours Julien market, there are people who, if I don’t go there for three weeks because I’m away, etc., when I come back, they ask me what I’ve been doing, and I think that’s nice."

He talks about sport and hiking as a way of striking a balance between pollution and health. In Marseille, he goes jogging (“I go running. It’s a bit of a way to break up my routine”), but only when the space is suitable or welcoming: when he lived next to Longchamp Park he gave up this practice because the park is too small and he quickly got bored. He mentions the wide pavements in the residential and rather affluent neighbourhood of Saint Barnabé (12^th arrondissement), where he can now continue to exercise, and also highlights the inequality of access to green spaces and the sea depending on the neighbourhood.

“Living somewhere” is also what Omar talks about in terms of love, even though he does not hide the difficulties of the city, where he has lived since childhood, especially since he has chaired a social association for years:

Marseille is an endearing city. And I have a great affection for Marseille. I don’t know why. It’s a completely irrational feeling, like when you fall in love, you feel it, you can’t explain it. That’s it. I really love my city, I really love the city, I really love the transformation it’s undergoing."

4 - Anaïs and Madani: moving away

On her map, Anaïs shows three places where she has lived, forming a life journey, including the city of Marseille, which is split between the Marseille she experiences in the present and an “improved Marseille” that reflects her desires, incorporating elements of the Ariège region, “where I want to be”, a future, dreamt-of territory. She first depicts “Paris, where I come from”, a city she appreciated for its many breathing spaces, particularly its parks, trees and the animals that inhabit them.

In the centre is ’Marseille, where I am’: she depicts a grey, concrete city, full of cars piled on top of each other, with a single tree, a single bird and a drop of water, and the city seems enclosed in a grey bubble, on which only roads appear. The calanques, adjacent to the city, resemble an aquarium: a grey circle filled with a blue water background. In the centre, her flat is represented by a house traversed by the elements of “life” that she cherishes at home: animals in orange, water in blue and plants in green.

This negative representation of Marseille is complemented by an “improved Marseille” that presents possible transformations: the confinement within the circle has disappeared, roads allow people to leave, there are fewer cars, and there are more trees. Finally, her map opens up to her future: “Ariège, where I want to be”, in which the grey of the concrete has completely disappeared, replaced by a strong presence of green, orange and blue. During the interview, Anaïs says she wants to leave Marseille:

Even in the Calanques, as there aren’t many trees either, there are a lot of rocks [...], that sense of breathing doesn’t exist because you don’t hear the trees themselves moving with the leaves, breathing. So yes, there is no breathing. Is it only related to the connections between people, the fact that it’s very dense, the lack of trees? But yes, there is something suffocating for me in Marseille that is obvious. I can no longer find breathing. So I’ve stopped looking for it, that’s clear, now I want to leave."

The desire to leave the city is just as strong for some people, and shows that finding space to breathe in the present sometimes depends on a desire for a better future. Madani, who runs a snack bar on a large boulevard in the 1^st arrondissement, is originally from the Kabyle mountains in Algeria. He says we must continue to “stay optimistic”, “make a little money and leave the city, buy a small house in the mountains and grow vegetables and fruit and eat cleanly. I think that’s the only way, otherwise you have no choice”.

Madani, who also lives and works in the 1^st arrondissement, acknowledges that, due to a lack of resources, people have to put up with the unsanitary conditions of precarious housing:

The problem is that there are insects everywhere. There are smells everywhere, sewers, insects, cockroaches, bedbugs especially. It’s everywhere in the city centre of Marseille. I say: the city centre of Marseille is not clean. People live there because they have no choice, they’re just looking for a roof over their heads. Most of the buildings, most of the blocks, are not clean on the outside or the inside."

By this, he is referring to the renovation work on the façades along Cours Lieutaud, where his restaurant is located, which highlights the contrast between façades blackened by smoke and others that have been renovated. His perception of toxicity in Marseille is linked to his childhood memories in the Kabyle mountains in Algeria:

— Magdaleine: Did you know when you were a child that... Did you realise it was a beautiful environment?

— Madani: No, no, no.

— Magdaleine: And when did you understand?

— Madani: Well, since there was this change, of... of leaving. Leaving the country and seeing what there is in the big cities. And then I realised that nature is very important, you see, otherwise I didn’t know at first."

Madani compares French food to the food he ate as a child, when his parents, who were farmers, prepared everything by hand:

In the mountains, we only ate natural, organic food. We ate from the garden. And when I arrived in France, in the city, we ate a lot of frozen food, a lot of chemical products. And it’s really... I can feel the change in my stomach. When I eat chemicals, my stomach hurts and I feel like throwing up. So, I’ve decided to spend my budget on organic products. Even here in the city, we try to eat well to regain our balance."

To determine whether a food is toxic, he relies mainly on his body. His point of reference is the taste memory of his childhood:

I’ve eaten organic meat from local farms, where the animals graze outside, in the mountains, and don’t eat other animals. [...] And now, when I eat meat, I don’t taste anything. It’s like eating a piece of cardboard, it has no taste. It’s the same with vegetables, too. »

5 - Julien and Bacari: remembering, fighting on

On the back of his map, Julien draws Guinea Conakry, where he comes from. Perhaps he draws it because he has just talked about it, in response to my questions; perhaps he draws it because he is proud of it; perhaps also, like Anaïs, the map of his country of origin acts as a counterpoint to the map of Marseille, clarifying his perception of the present.

This map allows him to show me his native region, forested Guinea, and to tell me about the hunting techniques he used, the vegetation, and the fruits and vegetables he ate. Thanks to this map, he tells me about his favourite dishes and how he can cook them in Marseille, even if they are not as good. He tells me that food in Guinea is “natural” because he could pick it directly from the fields (he mentions bananas, avocados, guavas, cassava and potatoes).

In France, he says that the food tastes the same but is less fresh and has fewer vitamins because it is kept “with ice” or contains “products”. ". He mentions his favourite dish, cassava leaf sauce, the preparation of which depends on the vouchers given to him by associations, which he can use to buy the necessary ingredients in certain specific shops in Noailles (1^st arrondissement). He then cooks it in the squat where he lives and shares it with his flatmates.

Can a dish be a space to breathe? In any case, it is a moment of sought-after pleasure, which triggers emotions linked to the memory of taste and the conviviality of eating with his flatmates. Why do people think of cooking when I ask them about toxicity? In almost all the interviews, the subject came up: gestures, tastes, moments, rituals that allow us to continue living in a toxic world. You only need to love eating to understand the appeal of such a response, especially when the dish evokes memories of childhood or of a country that had to be left behind. And the sociability that cooking brings is another form of nourishment that many consider just as necessary.

On his map of Marseille, Julien has marked the places he likes to frequent in green and, in red with a large exclamation mark, the ADDAP13, an organisation he was referred to when he arrived, which refused to grant him minor status and the protection to which he is entitled. He marked in green the office of the Saint Just 59 collective, which later helped him find accommodation, contacts and friends. Lonchamps Park, La Plaine and the Mucem are also shown in green because they are free public spaces that he likes to visit, and where he often goes to rap with his friends – and he plays me his songs, in which he recounts his journey.

Julien lived on the streets when he arrived in Marseille. He talks about the noise late into the night, the wandering, the lack of hygiene. In contrast, he tells me that in Conakry he was taken in by people who treated him like a member of their family:

Right now, I’m in a situation that’s worse than I expected, you see. And that will change over time, because it’s [related to the fact] that I don’t have a residence permit and I’m not working. In Conakry, at least I had the freedom to do what I wanted, but here I’m not free, you see? For now, in my mind, Conakry is better than Marseille. For now, in the situation I’m in, since I would never have slept on the streets in Conakry, I ask someone, you see?"

He humorously talks about the difference with France and imagines himself knocking on anyone’s door to ask for food – when in reality he is mainly describing the racism he experiences on the streets, particularly racial profiling on public transport. He therefore insists on the need to organise collectively in order to make ourselves heard: he spends a lot of time learning about the rights of minors and uses precise legal vocabulary to talk to me about it, as if he were making a plea. Today, he is part of Binkadi, a collective of “young exiles in struggle”, as they describe themselves.

Julien describes life in a squat and the exposure to various forms of toxicity that this entails:

As I was saying, there were young people sleeping at Saint-Charles station, and in the last few days it was rainy and cold, so we had to send them there to sleep, despite the bedbugs, because you can’t stay out in the rain or cold. »

When I ask him several times what kind of place he would like to live in if he could have anything he wanted, Julien repeats that he will go where there is work, and that above all he would like the stability that he does not have at present. But in the more distant future, he imagines going to small towns for holidays, such as Vitrolles, for example, which he has visited and finds more pleasant than Marseille, or to the forest region of Guinea to see the people from his village again and to show his future wife his native region. He therefore wants to have a freedom of movement that he does not currently have.

In another interview, Bacari recounts his journey into exile and the actions he is taking with his collective, the AUP, the association of users of the PADA (Plateforme d’Accueil des Demandeurs d’Asile - Asylum Seekers’ Reception Platform), which brings together more than 500 people around legal services and mutual aid actions. Bacari analyses the precariousness of life on the streets, which leaves very little choice over one’s own life: he says he depends on reception centres, associations, the town hall, the police and state institutions.

In such circumstances, he has very little leeway to protect himself from exposure to toxins, even in his diet or housing. For the “red market” that he organises with the AUP (food distribution), he says he obtains supplies from donations from associations (some of which depend on the Food Bank, an organisation that collects and distributes unsold food from supermarkets), from a few purchases (such as rice) or from “recycling” unsold, damaged and less fresh fruit and vegetables.

Bacari tells me that he went on holiday to Lozère through a network of friends. This gave him the opportunity to take a holiday outside the city of Marseille, which he had not left since his arrival except for brief stays with families in other cities. He says that his time in Lozère, with its trees, mountains, rivers and cows, reminded him of his native region in Sierra Leone. He particularly enjoyed swimming in the rivers because he does not swim in the sea, which reminds him of his crossing:

It was my first time there and it was incredible for me to be there. I didn’t even want to leave, I wanted to stay because it was nice. I saw a lot of things that I used to see in Africa, like the mountains, the forest, all these things. And also the places we went, the sea [the river]. All these things gave me a lot of joy. »

Living in Marseille seems to be ambivalent for him, between the difficulties linked to precariousness or the demand for papers on the one hand, and the network of friends and associations he has forged there, in which he is very involved, on the other. In the long term, he plans to be a cattle farmer in Sierra Leone and have his own herd.

Epilogue - “Living somewhere”, living in Marseille, as long as you can breathe

In what people told me during the interviews, there were things that seemed so obvious in their simplicity that I initially found it difficult to write them down: everyone would like to have a garden next to their home, a nice view from their window. All the people interviewed here express an attraction to beauty, calm, rich social life or sensory satisfaction - all subjects that form the basis of a dignified life.

Thus, we can understand that, on the one hand, true reproductive justice [27] does not only affirm the needs necessary for survival, and that, on the other hand, structural violence does not diminish the expectations of those who suffer from it. However, these issues are generally raised by organisations legitimised by the institutions of power, and therefore by people who are mostly white and affluent. Environmental racism, by relegating racialised and precarious people to the margins of the city, also pushes these desires to the margins of political discourse, even into a thick silence, that of a subaltern voice that cannot be heard because it does not fit into the categories of audible discourse (Spivak, 1988).

When Sanya, for example, says that she would like to have a vegetable garden at the foot of the Rosiers towers and a park with trees and a stream where children can lie down in the shade of the grass, she is simply dreaming of an environment she has known all her life and which post-colonial capitalism has deprived her of by structuring global ecological inequality (Schmitt, 2016).

The point here is to emphasise that those who live on the margins project desires for radical transformation of the urban spaces to which they have been relegated by post-colonial urban capitalism; and the apparent simplicity of the responses makes this radicalism all the more visible.

Bibliography

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