Katie Mulkowsky
International Urban Development Association (INTA)
France
Hi all! My name is Katie and I’m a sophomore at Gallatin concentrating in sustainable development and urban theory. A lot of what I’m studying surrounds the various intersections of environmentalism, city planning, geography, and policy, and I’m so excited to explore these topics further in France this summer as a Global Fellow in Human Rights.
My project concerns a very specific interest I have in promoting human rights through space. To me, public housing developments throughout the urban fringe of Paris raise questions surrounding not just access and separation but also about what it means to be “French” and the ways that religious and ethnic minorities can become excluded from that narrative. Human rights pertaining to migrants, living standards, religious expression, local activism, women, and labor all come into play when considering the Parisian banlieue, or suburbs, and recent ways in which counterterrorism measures have directed public sentiment toward it.
France’s banlieues are generally peopled by working-class North African and Middle Eastern immigrants. In a New Yorker article describing the situation inside one of them, George Packer writes that “to many Parisians, the 93 [district] signifies decayed housing projects, crime, unemployment, and Muslims.” He goes on to say that “France has all kinds of suburbs, but the word for them, banlieues, has become pejorative, meaning slums dominated by immigrants … Conceived as utopias for workers, they have become concentrations of poverty and social isolation.”
In such a context, I’m looking to situate my project within the framework of both urban justice and planning. It will be overseen by International Urban Development Association (INTA), whose Paris office I will be working with part-time while I conduct my own interview-driven research in the banlieues. I hope to eventually compile this into some sort of oral history project. This summer, INTA will be coordinating a seminar on the impacts of sustainable urban development on mass migration and refugees. I am greatly looking forward to learning from the organization as well as the people I meet, and can’t wait to keep you updated once I’m on the ground!