Carceral junctions are confining structures, where people wait in situations of pressure and possibility before they move or are moved elsewhere. They are sites of interface and contestation. Conceptualizing camps as carceral junctions means examining the double sense of ‘moving camps’: On the one hand, camps shape, detain and enable particular forms of movement for residents as they move between camps and cultivate networks in hopes of viable futures. On the other hand, camps themselves are also mobile in the sense that models of encampment travel and shift within and between states, just as individual camp staff careers may span multiple camps. Bringing these senses together, the contributions in the special issue develop the concept of the carceral junction as a way of grasping the paradoxical work and consequences of camps. By proposing the concept of carceral junctions we intend to draw on but also critique conceptualizations and theories that either reify the confining nature of camps as places of exception or overly celebrate the agency of migrant mobility. The term is coined to grasp the mobilities of knowledge, power and bodies that characterize asylum camps, as well as their interfaces and connectedness in a context where states adopt increasingly restrictive refugee policies.
AbstractAsylum policies in the Global North have increasingly turned towards populist policies of deterrence, as states attempt to make themselves seem as unattractive as possible to would-be asylum seekers. This article examines one such case: the tent camps for asylum seekers that were hastily erected in Denmark in early 2016. However, while the tent camps surely are an instance of symbolic politics, we argue that to understand their daily operation, attention must also be paid to their infrastructural qualities. Drawing on two months of fieldwork at a tent camp in Næstved, this article examines the ways in which asylum policy and infrastructure interact to shape the daily lives and interactions of camp residents and staff. We propose two paradoxical frames for the analysis, which we term ‘spectacular obscurity’ and ‘successful failure’. The tent camps were trumpeted as symbolic politics, while their daily operation remained obscured, only to burst in to scandal as reports emerged of threatening and violent behaviour on the part of the staff. The tent camps’ infrastructure was constantly failing, as both material and social support broke down, but at the same time these failures successfully formed the basis for the everyday interactions that structured life in the camps. We conclude by questioning the effect of the policies of deterrence as mediated through particular infrastructures, suggesting that the materialities of the tent camps played a more significant role than supposed by policy makers, and that paradoxes of infrastructure provide a useful perspective through which to analyse migration management more broadly.
Asylum seekers in Europe face increasingly restrictive policy regimes across the continent. In Denmark, they are held at designated asylum centres while their cases are processed and are subject to limitations on their movement, education and employment, as well as to a degree of surveillance from both the state and the Danish Red Cross, which operates the majority of the asylum centres. While these structures are in some ways reminiscent of Foucault's panopticon, I want to suggest a counterpoint to the panopticon, which I call the ‘myopticon’ to indicate the near‐sightedness of the central surveying eye. The myopticon is a near‐sighted system of surveillance practices, knowledges and sanctions, deployed as though it were panoptic. I want to suggest that the uncertainty that has soaked through the Danish asylum system and profoundly affected the asylum seekers in it is not a byproduct of bureaucratic processing, but intrinsic to the operation of the myopticon. By drawing out points of distinction with Foucault's panopticon, I sketch the outlines of a new technology of power that has powerful consequences for the daily lives of asylum seekers in Denmark.
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