Composer avec une intimité déniée : demandeurs d’asile en France et en Allemagne

Abstract

The life of asylum seekers in reception institutions is made up of waiting and a complex relationship to space. On both levels - temporal and spatial - they experience and feel an extreme sensory pressure of intranquillity that weighs on their identity and their ability to sustain relationships, to absorb the shocks of interactions to create a common sphere. This pressure makes it extremely precarious to create an intimate sphere in which to rest and regain strength against the overall inhospitality of the asylum system. This article begins by focusing on the theme of inhabitation. It shows that the living space of asylum seekers is not suitable for protecting them and that it does not give them the possibility of receiving, which would give them power over the place. From these difficulties to receive, however a central desire among asylum seekers, I cross the theme of inhabitation with that of sexuality, to show that the difficulties to meet women (and a fortiori to have a sexual life), when added to the absence of work and of a home, takes an important place in the global devaluation of the masculinity of the asylum seekers and their exclusion from the legitimate masculinities

Keywords

• sexuality
• masculinity
• intimacy
• asylum seekers
• habitability
• everyday life