Fen-Orchids, a garden, and a tandem in the (post-)Jungle: unsettling care and control in the European borderscape

The purpose of this article is to unsettle and thicken the increasing attention that has recently been given to care in design research. I do this by looking to both the contents and the conditions of making a two-screen video with a tandem bicycle in the so-called “Jungle” refugee camp in Calais, northern France, and in the eco-park that replaced the camp after it was cleared. In doing so, I make two arguments. First, that care for nature in the camp is simultaneously a form of control over access to the space. Second, using the tandem as an example, I discuss a speculative approach to care that is concerned with consequences and possibilities by designing vulnerability into objects. In doing so, the article foregrounds critical approaches to care in speculative design research, conceptualizing care beyond normative assumptions of inherent “goods” to tune in to the complex and troubling political and ecological relations that certain care practices produce.