 Hello, everyone. Let's talk about social inclusion one more time. Today, we talk about the experiences of young North African irregular migrants in Geneva, Switzerland. Today, my guests and I, Maxime Felder, we explore how they receive support from local organizations, how they make sense of this support, and how it shapes their everyday lives. Maxime and I will also look at the challenges and the paradoxes of providing support to irregular migrants and what this means for their inclusion in society. Maxime, welcome to our episode. Thank you for having me. Your article begins by stating that the inclusion of irregular migrants is a complex, of course, contested issue relevant to a significant number of people. I assume it's important exploring because now there is no easy answer to this question of how to best include irregular migrants in society. Of course, and I think like the case study that we have at hand provides a good case for showing different aspects of this complexity. By reading your article, I've got an impression that there is a lack of research on how cities provide support to irregular migrants. So was this the void that you wanted to fill? Yes, I mean, in my view, social scientists should not worry too much about research gaps because it's always worth revisiting things that we think we already know. So instead of feeding a gap, I would say that our research aimed at contributing to the broader debates on urban inclusion or urban hospitality, depending on how we frame it. But I wouldn't say there is a lack of research. What I would say is that most of the research I've read at least focuses on policies and on the tensions between different levels of governance of irregular migration. And we take a slightly different approach here by looking at the street level and by confronting like the experience of one specific, very specific category of irregular migrants and the social workers working with them in the everyday life. So let's jump into it. What are the main findings or conclusions of your article? Well, first, I could maybe mention that irregular migrants are not a social group. It's not a research population per se. It's a very heterogeneous administrative category. And even like within this legal or administrative categories, there are important differences with respect to, for example, who will be able in the years to come to apply for regularization and who will be part from it. So in our research, which focused on more broadly on different kinds of newcomers, not only irregular and not only from North African countries, we met a really wide range of people and there is very little in common between the young North African featured in this article and say an irregular migrant woman who arrives by plane from Bogota and works here and there as a cleaner and maybe eventually will manage to regularize her situation as a deserving worker. So irregular migrants, as you as you guess, have very different backgrounds. They also arrive in very different contexts where their skills, their professional skills, but also language skills will be more or less useful. They also arrive in different health conditions. And there are chances of finding a source of income, finding a place more broadly in the city depends on how their social class, their gender and their race intersect and race as a social construct, of course. So in the case of the people we are interested in here, being young male, being Muslim, being of North African origin and from lower class, lower social class. This puts them in a very unfavorable position among irregular migrants were already in a quite unfavorable position. And considering maybe you're the specific group that you studied and well also considered the complexity of the groups that you mentioned. Let's look a bit I would like you to explore potential policy impacts. Yes, so our aim was not to make recommendation, of course, but to contribute to an understanding of what is going on and we also want to fuel a discussion on what kind of hospitality or what kind of inclusion is or should be given to irregular migrants. So it is very important to talk about policies as colleagues have done, and about how illegality is produced. But we think it's also important to debate what what is going on on the ground, what social workers are doing what should they do. When their task is receiving people in precarious situations so one contribution of our article is to focus, not on policies but to talk about social work. That was the topic of the special issue. And so we think it's necessary to discuss the following options should social work encourage irregular migrants to remain autonomous to be mobile. Even if it means kicking them out of the shelter in the morning, or should it adopt what we call in this article palliative approach, and maybe refrain from from trying to transform these people situation and instead letting them rest. And so research wise I assume, looking ahead probably what we need is more studies on specific groups on the street level as you said so what should we turn our attention to now. Well, I think ethnography provides a nice way of, of opening windows on the world, the world of these people and maybe I could mention an anecdote that that goes back to the beginning of the field work. So I was in the reception center on the shores of of Lake Geneva in Switzerland. And it is so it's a beautiful old ship where around like 203 breakfasts are served every day to anyone who needs it. And in those days only and in those days, you had to get out before half past nine. So around that time social workers, social worker asked a man if he liked the breakfast that they they had made pancakes, and he said yes. I didn't come here to eat. So you made a pancakes and it's cool like we appreciate it but we don't really care about pancakes what are pancakes, when you don't have a job when you have nothing to do, because you don't have documents. This interpretation and something that is really widely documented in the literature is that this is the result of contradiction between the inclusionary approach by local and urban actors and the exclusionary approach by national and super national authorities who restrict access to legal migration and agree with this interpretation but by looking at the ground level we believe that paradox also exists in the ways in which assistance is organized and provided. And can you provide additional resources about the topic that was discussed today. Additional research I mean we published another paper in the sister journal I don't know if that's a word. Urban planning. That covers other aspects of this contradiction between hospitality and in hospitality. And we also brought one recently in French. Perfect. Maxim this episode has been straight in the point I think we have a great episode at hands but if there was anything. If you could wrap up this conversation in one or two sentences. What would it be. Okay, first, the inclusion of irregular migrants in cities is indeed limited by restrictive national migration policies and super national policies, but I think we have to acknowledge that this is also limited by practical and symbolic aspects of how the distance is organized. And maybe a second thing if you allow me and conditional access to resources and to services, including to irregular migrants can be combined with high with high practical demands in terms of the ability to move from one place to another to keep up with schedule what is open now what will close when and and to maintain this place over time over weeks maybe over months. And I think these practical and temporal aspects deserve more attention in the inclusion debate. Perfect. Maxim, it was a pleasure. For the listeners who are watching us on YouTube, you can find all the resources and the study that serve this base for this conversation on the let's talk about social inclusion website. And you can also listen to this episode, whatever gets your podcast should you prefer an alternative type of content. Subscribe to our newsletter or follow us at cogitatio LTA.