From Yaoundé to Cayenne: prison politics in the “South”.

From Yaoundé to Cayenne: prison politics in the “South”

Speaker: Marie Morelle is Professor of Geography at Lyon 2 Lumière

This presentation is based on individual research conducted in Cameroon between 2010 and 2017. It is also part of a multidisciplinary research program “ECOPPAF” I co-directed with Frédéric Le Marcis between 2015 and 2019 in 7 African countries.

In Yaoundé, I wanted to understand the prison experience related to the urban experience: what are the logics of control of popular illegalism? I was interested in the informal dimension of the prison’s governance, as well as the place of prison in the life paths of inmates, mostly young men from working-class neighborhoods. I wanted to think about the political dimension of incarceration in an authoritarian context, beyond the single category of “political prisoners”.

After a short presentation of Yaoundé’s prison, in a second time, I’d like to briefly put it in dialogue with research I begun in July 2024 in French Guiana with Frédéric Le Marcis: identifying the place of prison in access to healthcare. To what extent does incarceration become a temporary resource for individuals in highly precarious situations, sometimes in an illegal situation in a French territory at the borders of the Hexagone?

By doing so, I would like to open the discussion on the situation of prisons “in the South”, to reflect on their genealogy and imperial traces, and ultimately on the place of confinement in a post-colonial context.

Marie Morelle is Professor of Geography at Lyon 2 Lumière University (EVS unit research). She teaches development studies, social and political geography, urban planning in the South, and research methodology. Her research questions deal mainly with prison (Cameroon and French Guiana) and police (France), urban informal activities (French post-industrial territories) and their connections to global chains of value (Côte d’Ivoire, Emirates).

Photo Credit: Yaoundé Central Prison (2013, Morelle)

This workshop is part of the Social Penalities Across Boundaries series which is organised by Professor Richard Sparks, University of Edinburgh, and Professor Máximo Sozzo, Universidad Nacional del Litoral in Argentina (UNL).