Political geographies of everyday life and agency in camps

Abstract

Millions of displaced people currently live in various camps throughout the world. Asylum and refugee camps – both formal and informal – are growing in size and scope, becoming more permanent features on their respective landscapes. Our attention in this article is focused on the space of the camp itself, which has long been marked by profoundly unequal relations of power. A common theme that characterizes camps, whether operated by the UNHCR or any other group, is that of control exercised over the inhabitants’ daily lives, routines, and mobilities. In this article, we consider what the reality of camp life looks like for those within them, drawing on the voices of the (multiple) dispossessed and how they experience everyday life in these places. Our argument is not that camps represent spaces of control; that much is both self-evident and confirmed by much scholarship through the years. Drawing on interviews with camp residents –both refugees and asylum seekers–across different regions and displaced by different contexts, we look at some of the key features that characterize life within the camp, that illustrate what forms control might take, and also indicate the ways in which camp residents seek to actively resist and transform those regimes of control.