THE REFUGEE CAMP: EXCEPTION AND RESISTANCE

Abstract

European governments' approach to migratory flows legitimizes "spaces of exception," where the legal order is suspended, and sovereign power has an impact on human lives. This article examines these spaces from a critical standpoint. Reflecting on two aspects of the same process is critical: first, the state's attempt to reduce the refugee to biological life, which manifests as violence against bodies as a tool of regulation and power; and second, the refugee's agency, which is sometimes manifested through his own body, and the emergence of politics in these spaces. The guiding question is: How does the relationship between violence and resistance in the camps play out? State violence finds resistance movements in these spaces—it is not only the bodies that are victims of state violence, but also the power of agency of these subjects, the escape from the place of victim to the space of political resistance in which it seeks to break with the idea of "bare life."