Campzenship: rethinking the camp as a political space

Nando Sigona, University of Birmingham, gives a talk for the COMPAS seminar series. Drawing on ethnographic research in Italian refugee/nomad camps where forcibly displaced Roma from former Yugoslavia were sheltered, this talk reflects on the spatial dimension of social relations and the social construction of spaces in camps and camp-like institutions. It argues that Agamben conceptualisation of the camp as a space of exception fails to grasp the complexity of social relations in camps. Focusing on the resources, entitlements, and rights of camp residents and their interactions with the state apparatus, the paper explores what Nando Sigona term the comfort of exceptionality, and proposes the concept of campzenship to capture the specific form of citizenship produced in/by the camp, and the legacy of the camp on former inhabitants.