Politicizing camps: forging transgressive citizenships in and through transit
Rygiel, K. Politicizing Camps: Forging Transgressive Citizenships in and through Transit, in: Citizenship Studies 16 (5-6), 2012, pp. 807-825.
Can we think about camps as spaces of politics and citizenship-making?
The proliferation of migrant and refugee camps for governing populations challenges the contemporary politics of citizenship. This article explores the camp as a question of citizenship. How do camp spaces enable the reproduction of certain spaces as the proper sites of politics and the constitution of some subjects and not others as the proper political subjects of citizenship? Can we think about camps as spaces of politics and citizenship-making? Situating the camp within the context of the historical emergence of extraterritoriality in relation to citizenship, I argue that camps reproduce orientalist mappings of the world that deem some people incapable or unworthy of citizenship. Rather than a space of exceptionality, outside of and separate from the space of the citizen, the article investigates the camp as both a political and politicized space, in which artists, activists and migrants use the camp as a site of building de-orientalizing cartographies to politicize migrant rights and political subjectivities.