This paper investigates the use of trauma stories and discourses of humanitarian governmentality in interactions between NGOs and Afghan refugee seekers in Paris and Calais. The context is a French state with an increasingly neoliberal humanitarian structure and the growth of anti-foreigner sentiment among wide swaths of the population, as well as multiple contestations between the state and humanitarian NGOs in light of mass displacements of refugees before and during the Summer 2024 Olympic Games in Paris. I use participant observation in humanitarian and cultural events and semi-structured interviews with asylum seekers and NGO workers as my primary methods. I use the theoretical insights of scholars of humanitarianism to situate the trauma story in the binary of humanitarian universalism and political particularism that creates humanitarian governmentality. I conclude that storytelling about the past is conditioned by discourses of trauma pervasive in humanitarian governmentality, in particular the binary understanding of trauma and experience that depoliticizes and “de-cultures” the asylum seeker. This research opens up new perspectives on the use of emic categories as an alternative to the discourse of trauma for a clearer understanding of asylum seekers' experiences.