Baras - France
The irony of squatting in an abandoned employment office in the Parisian suburb of Bagnolet is not lost on a group of West Africans called the Baras collective (le collectif Baras). Members ended up in the French capital after fleeing Libya during the 2011 uprising against Muammar Gaddafi. In the wake of the outbreak of civil war they fled across the Mediterranean Sea to Italy, eventually making their way to France. The name Baras is derived from the word Baara, meaning ‘work’ in Bambara, a language widely spoken in Mali: it represents the work they did as economic migrants in Libya, before becoming refugees in Europe.
In France they struggle to shed their status as sans-papiers. Without papers they are unable to work or receive state assistance. In September 2015, the owners of the former Pôle Emploi (employment office) were granted an eviction order against the 100-strong Baras collective, who had called the squat home for just over a year. Ever since, the collective has been in limbo; waiting, and doing what they can to stay active, promote their cause and avoid being made homeless once again.
This work was exhibited alongside Les Roses d'Acier at the Gladstone Hotel for the 2016 Contact Photography Festival: Paris: Baras / Les Roses d'Acier.
Yacouba Camara at a Baras demonstration in front of the town hall of Bagnolet.
Tairu Di Sam on a tram to the Ghana vs. Mali match.
Michel Sidibe uses a beam for chin-ups.
Malian tea on a hot plate.
Drissa Samake and Oumar Mariko play dame.
Lamine Bakayoko smokes by the gate to the parking lot.
An online exchange with a friend back home in Mali.
Bamba Kone in the suburb of Montreuil; nicknamed the "second Malian town after Bamako".
Clothesline at the squat.
The following is an image taken during a short visit to Paris in January 2017, more than two years after the Baras collective first started squatting in the former employment office in Bagnolet.
Amadou Traore in the parking lot of the squat one morning.
In the summer of 2017 the Baras collective were evicted from their home of three years, the former employment office in Bagnolet.
As of November 2017 most of the Baras are living in a squat in the neighbouring suburb of Les Lilas where they have occupied a building once housing a commercial scale laundromat. They are fighting to have the power turned on. Some members have moved to other smaller squats.
The following images were taken in November 2017.
Lamine Bakayoko, who recently secured documentation that allows him to reside legally in France, is pictured in front of the sealed gates of Baras collective's former squat. Above him are poster images of Bamba Kone.
Tairu Di Sam stands in the kitchen of a squat in Les Lilas where he now lives with a few other members of the Baras collective. This house is located very close to the building that the Baras were evicted from this past summer.
Amadou Traore uses his phone to illuminate a floor plan in a building in Les Lilas where many Baras members are now squatting, without electricity.
Baras member Sanogo illuminated by the light of a gas lamp, sits in a common area of the squat currently home to many of the collective's men.