The Place de la Bastille is best-known for its former prison — and the liberation of its inmates on July 14, 1789. But one Tuesday evening late last month, this Parisian square housed a new set of tenants: about forty-five unaccompanied minors from mostly African and Middle Eastern countries. For the past week they had been sleeping there in small tents, arranged in a U-shape near the edge of the monument to the former jail.

The temporary camp was organized by Utopia 56, a French housing nonprofit, to bring attention to the catch-22 experienced by unaccompanied minors in France who are not recognized as such, and are thereby barred from state-run housing assistance schemes.

“Most of the young people here are found on the street, living in makeshift shelters, being cleared out of lots of parks, by the police, [being pushed] further and further away, outside Paris. So, they are invisible to people,” Flore Judet, a spokesperson for the association, told Jacobin.