Skip to content
1981
1-2: Listen to Performance, Listen to Voices
  • ISSN: 2057-0341
  • E-ISSN: 2057-035X

Abstract

This article presents the results of an ethnographic study conducted in an emergency shelter for migrants in Paris, managed entirely by volunteers from the charity Solidarité Saint Bernard. The research explores how this shelter, sustained by the surrounding neighbourhood, cultivates a hospitable milieu that enables new arrivals to settle and participate in shared social life. At the heart of this dynamic is the practice of commensality: daily communal dinners that structured the shelter’s operations and embodied a collective effort to foster coexistence. Drawing on various ethnographic materials I focus on one particularly resonant moment: the singing of the guests during the final dinner of the season. Singing, understood primarly as a corporeal expression, sheds light on how shared meals enable participants to access emotional registers of nostalgia, thereby reaffirming intimate attachments. Far from being solely an act of charitable food provision, these shared meals reveal a more complex social support system – one rooted in neighbourhood solidarity, lived experience and the embodied enactment of hospitality. In sum, this research examines the material and affective conditions under which such expressions become possible in the context of migration.

Funding
This study was supported by the:
  • Agence Nationale de la Recherche under the ‘Investissements d’avenir’ (Award ANR-15-IDEX-02)
© 2025 Intellect Ltd
Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1386/jivs_00100_1
2025-12-08
2026-04-23

Metrics

Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Artaud de la Ferrière, Alexis (2018), ‘Somewhere between love and justice: A Roman Catholic church in Paris responds to the European migration crisis’, International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society, 31:4, pp. 397–417, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10767-018-9289-7.
     [Google Scholar]
  2. Aulanier, Audran (2023), ‘Vivre dans l’intranquillité, une étude sur la vie quotidienne des demandeurs d’asile en France et en Allemagne’, doctoral thesis, Paris: EHESS.
     [Google Scholar]
  3. Aulanier, Audran (2025), ‘Attention and hospitality: An attempt at a socio-phenomenological definition of the relationships between asylum seekers and “Helpers”’, In Phainomena, 34, pp. 132–33, https://doi.org/10.2143/EPH.6.0.3289796.
     [Google Scholar]
  4. Boissière, Anne (2022), ‘Jouer avec sa voix’, in C. Leroy and C. Palermo (eds), Pesanteur et portance. Une éthique de la gravité, Paris: Hermann, pp. 165–82.
     [Google Scholar]
  5. Boudou, Benjamin (2012), ‘A political anthropology of hospitality’, Revue du MAUSS, 40:2, pp. 267–84, https://doi.org/10.3917/rdm.040.0267.
     [Google Scholar]
  6. Breviglieri, Marc (2001), ‘L’étreinte de l’origine. Attachement, mémoire et nostalgie chez les enfants d’immigrés maghrébins’, Confluences Méditerranée, 39:4, pp. 37–47, https://doi.org/10.3917/come.039.0037.
     [Google Scholar]
  7. Breviglieri, Marc (2006), ‘Penser l’habiter, estimer l’habitabilité’, Tracé, 23, pp. 9–14, https://doi.org/10.5169/SEALS-99521.
     [Google Scholar]
  8. Breviglieri, Marc (2018), ‘The Guaranteed City. The Ruin of Urban Criticism?’, in J. Manuel Resende, M. Cotovio, C. Delaunay, M. Breviglieri (eds), Challenges of Communication in a Context of Crisis. Troubles, Misunderstandings and Discords, Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 206–49.
     [Google Scholar]
  9. Breviglieri, Marc (2019), ‘Lisbonne, 21e siècle’, EspacesTemps.net, 7 March, https://www.espacestemps.net/articles/lisbonne-21e-siecle/. Accessed 30 June 2025.
  10. Cardon, Pascal (2017), ‘Introduction. Les grammaires du manger. Quand manger fait société’, in P. Cardon (ed.), Quand manger fait société, Villeneuve-d’Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, pp. 13–22.
     [Google Scholar]
  11. Cefaï, Daniel and Stavo-Debauge, Joan (2024), ‘Pragmatisme, pluralisme culturel et question raciale’, Pragmatisme, pluralisme culturel et question raciale, 7:8, pp. 12–106.
     [Google Scholar]
  12. Cefaï, Daniel, Berger, Mathieu, Carlier, Louise and Gaudin, Olivier (eds) (2025), Écologie humaine: Une science sociale des milieux de vie, Saint-Etienne: Créaphis, p. 768.
     [Google Scholar]
  13. Corbeau, Jean-Pierre (2005), ‘Sociabilités urbaines contemporaines et cuisines de foire. De la convivialité à la commensalité’, Diasporas, 7:1, pp. 147–58, https://doi.org/10.3406/diasp.2005.1022.
     [Google Scholar]
  14. De Saint Aubert, Emmanuel (2016), ‘Introduction à la notion de portance’, Archives de philosophie, 79:2, pp. 317–43, https://doi.org/10.3917/aphi.792.0317.
     [Google Scholar]
  15. De Saint Aubert, Emmanuel (2022), ‘Réflexions en vue d’une articulation entre portance et care’, in C. Leroy and C. Palermo (eds), Pesanteur et portance: Une éthique de la gravité, Paris: Hermann, pp. 13–36.
     [Google Scholar]
  16. Feld, Steven (2023), La recherche comme composition, Dijon: Les Presses du Réel.
     [Google Scholar]
  17. Felder, Maxime, Stavo-Debauge, Joan, Pattaroni, Luca, Trossat, Marie and Drevon, Guillaume (2020), ‘Between hospitality and inhospitality: The Janus-faced “arrival infrastructure”’, Urban Planning, 5:3, pp. 55–66, https://doi.org/10.17645/up.v5i3.2941.
     [Google Scholar]
  18. Herzfeld, Michael (1981), ‘Performative categories and symbols of passage in rural Greece’, The Journal of American Folklore, 94:371, pp. 44–57, https://doi.org/10.2307/540775.
     [Google Scholar]
  19. Laborde, Denis (1999), ‘Enquête sur l’improvisation’, in M. de Fornel and L. Quéré (eds), La logique des situations, Paris: Éditions de l’École des hautes études en sciences sociales, pp. 261–99, https://doi.org/10.4000/books.editionsehess.10699.
     [Google Scholar]
  20. Laborde, Denis (2019), ‘La musique pour s’entendre? L’accueil des migrants à Baigorri’, in T. Bachir and A. Damon-Guillot (eds), Une pluralité audible? Mondes de musique en contact, Tours: Publications Universitaires François Rabelais, pp. 27–51.
     [Google Scholar]
  21. Le Courant, Stefan (2022), Vivre sous la menace: les sans-papiers et l’Etat, Paris: Seuil.
     [Google Scholar]
  22. Leroy, Christine (2022), ‘Introduction. Portance et care: prendre soin, en deçà et au-delà des mots’, in C. Leroy and C. Palermo (eds), Pesanteur et portance Une éthique de la gravité, Paris: Hermann, pp. 5–9.
     [Google Scholar]
  23. Milliot, Virginie (2013), ‘Pluralistic ambiance and urban socialisation’, Ambiances, 1:February, n.pag., https://doi-org/10.4000/ambiances.223.
     [Google Scholar]
  24. Pecqueux, Anthony and Roueff, Olivier (2015), ‘Introduction’, Culture & Musée, 25, pp. 13–22, https://doi.org/10.4000/culturemusees.442.
     [Google Scholar]
  25. Pistrick, Eckehrad (2018), ‘La sonorité du vide’, Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée, 144, pp. 61–80, https://doi.org/10.4000/remmm.11804.
     [Google Scholar]
  26. Puig, Nicolas (2009), ‘Exils décalés: Les registres de la nostalgie dans les musiques palestiniennes au Liban’, Revue européenne des migrations internationales, 25:2, pp. 83–100, https://doi.org/10.4000/remi.4953.
     [Google Scholar]
  27. Ricœur, Paul (2006), On Translation (trans. E. Brennan), London and New York: Routledge.
     [Google Scholar]
  28. Stavo-Debauge, Joan (2017), Qu’est-ce que l’hospitalité? Recevoir l’étranger à la communauté, Montréal: Liber.
     [Google Scholar]
  29. Stavo-Debauge, Joan (2020), ‘De l’hospitalité comme d’une qualité des environnements et des infrastructures: Bruxelles et Genève sous l’œil de nouveaux venus précaires’, in Hospitalities, Hostilities: Narratives and Representations, international conference, Université Grenoble Alpes, IDEX HOMES/ILCEA4, https://idexhomes.wixsite.com/idexhomes/stavo. Accessed 13 October 2025.
  30. Thévenot, Laurent (2014), ‘Voicing concern and difference: From public spaces to common-places’, European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology, 1, pp. 7–34, https://doi.org/10.1080/23254823.2014.905749.
     [Google Scholar]
  31. Thibaud, Jean-Paul (2018), ‘Les puissances d’imprégnation des ambiances’, Communications, 102:1, pp. 67–79, https://doi.org/10.3917/commu.102.0067.
     [Google Scholar]
  32. Tibere, Laurence (2018), ‘La construction sociale de “l’en commun” par la consommation’, Hommes & migrations, 1320, pp. 31–39, https://doi.org/10.4000/hommesmigrations.4044.
     [Google Scholar]
  33. Zask, Joëlle (2022), ‘Écologie du voisinage’, Communications, 110:1, pp. 99–113, https://doi.org/10.3917/commu.110.0099.
     [Google Scholar]
  34. Breviglieri, Marc (2010), ‘De la cohésion de vie du migrant: déplacement migratoire et orientation existentielle’, Revue européenne des migrations internationales, 26:2, pp. 57–76, https://doi.org/10.4000/remi.5137.
     [Google Scholar]
  35. De Saint Aubert, Emmanuel (2015), ‘La chair ouverte à la portance de l’être’, Alter: Revue de phénoménologie, 23, pp. 168–85, https://doi.org/10.4000/alter.384.
     [Google Scholar]
  36. Pistrick, Eckehrad (2015), Performing Nostalgia: Migration Culture and Creativity in South Albania, Ashgate: Routledge.
     [Google Scholar]
  37. Stavo-Debauge, Joan (2018), ‘Towards a hospitable and inclusive city’, in M. Berger, B. Moritz, L. Carlier and M. Ranzato (eds), Designing Urban Inclusion, Brussels: Metrolab Series, pp. 165–76.
     [Google Scholar]
/content/journals/10.1386/jivs_00100_1
Loading
Enacting nostalgia: Singing during the last dinner of a winter housing scheme for migrants
Journal of Interdisciplinary Voice Studies 10, 11 (2025); https://doi.org/10.1386/jivs_00100_1
/content/journals/10.1386/jivs_00100_1
/content/journals/10.1386/jivs_00100_1
Loading

Data & Media loading...

  • Article Type: Article
Keyword(s): commensality; corporeal; ethnography; hospitality; migration; neighbourhood; song

Most Cited Most Cited RSS feed

This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a success
Invalid data
An error occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error
Please enter a valid_number test