The tunnel city is a non-place

Astrid Laura Dam Jensen handed in her thesis in geography at Roskilde University before the summer holidays. Together with her thesis partner, she has done field studies in Rødbyhavn among the foreign tunnel workers on the Fehmarn project. On Thursday, she gave a presentation on her conclusions at the GRASP festival in Roskilde for knowledge about sustainable changes.

According to the newly minted graduate in plan, city and process, the tunnel city, FLC village, is a non-place that reduces people to a resource:

On the other side of the fence
– The interesting thing is how the guidelines seem to dictate that this camp must be located on state land, i.e. the construction site. Then the homes will be swallowed up in the construction site’s structures and all the security that surrounds it. It blurs the line between the homes and their work, i.e. everyday life itself and their working life. And so it is that the men in there are in a way reduced to just being these workers. In contrast to the free cities on the outside, where you can drift in and out and live your everyday life, and be a perfect human being, Astrid Laura Dam Jensen tells us.

Have you been inside to see the homes?
– No, we have not been inside to see the homes, and we had actually applied for that in collaboration with the trade union, whether we could get a security card to be able to enter. That is what has been interesting to us. There are some people living behind that fence – with the video surveillance that comes with being behind the fence around one of the world’s largest current infrastructure projects, she says.

Access with security card only
Precisely the fence and the other security measures also make living in FLC Village very special in other ways:

– They are allocated a room and can only enter with a security card. This means that they must not have guests from outside. They have to identify themselves to get in and out, Astrid Laura Dam Jensen tells.

Will avoid Klondike
Aren’t the workers free to just find another place to live on Lolland?

– There is a requirement from Femern A/S for the contractors that they must, as far as possible, ensure that the workers live in the housing designed for this purpose. Of course, this is also to avoid such a Klondike from happening. We have seen this elsewhere in connection with the metro construction, in Rødovre for example, where a lot of Portuguese workers were simply put into a factory and then had to live there, says Astrid Laura Dam Jensen.

The intentions behind FLC Village are basically good enough, she says. It just has some side effects:

Restarts every month
– You want to regulate to ensure the best conditions for the workers. They have their own room, which must be a minimum size in the rooms, and they must have access to their own toilet. We know very little about what it is like for workers to live there for 28 days. What we do know is that when you check in, you get a new room every time. And that means the rooms are restarted every month. This means that workers must not leave objects behind. They must not decorate the rooms with pictures of their family and such. So they must always be ready to move and be on the move, tells Astrid Laura Dam Jensen.

The tunnel workers themselves pay to live in the FLC village.