Search

This article examines the complex and ambivalent nature of the encounters between British volunteers and refugees within the 2015 Refugees Welcome movement. The 72 interviews we conducted with volunteers active in different charities and informal networks reveal the significance of the logic of trust in these encounters. We show that although participants often base their engagement on claims that disrupt dominant narratives about border controls, they also tend to endorse and reproduce bordering processes based on the perceived trustworthiness of refugees and, sometimes, exclude some groups from their support. Taking insights from the literature on encounters and critical humanitarianism, our article highlights from a theoretical and empirical perspective how “ordinary participants” in the refugee support sector can subvert humanitarian borders, but also participate in the construction of new types of borders based on domopolitics. More generally, the article aims to highlight civil society’s voluntary participation in the governance of migration.

This article examines how refugee support volunteers based in Britain and in France negotiate the boundaries between charity (or humanitarian) action and social activism since the 2015 ‘refugee crisis’. Scholarly literature has often separated charity and humanitarian action from social activism, as the former is seen as lacking the goal of social and political change that characterises the latter. The set of 147 in-depth interviews we conducted in different British and French refugee support charities and networks reveals the complex relationship between charity and protest. Through the focus on the moral dilemmas that participants encounter throughout their experience in the field, this article aims to highlight the ambivalences of their engagement as well as its transformative potential. Our analysis shows how participants develop new cognitive frames, emotions and interpersonal relations that transform their engagement and lead them to link charity/humanitarian action with broader objectives of social and political change. More generally, our analysis highlights the processes through which participants construct political narratives that aim to challenge state-driven policies and discourses of “migration management”. This article aims to contribute to the reflection about the informal character of the forms of participation analysed in this special issue, through the focus on the moral dilemmas and the “quiet” and “unexceptional” politics of volunteering.

Ispirandosi al recente filone di ricerca dei critical Romani studies, l'articolo si prefigge di connettere la letteratura intersezionale con quella sulla segregazione abitativa e razziale delle minoranze rom e sinte, con l'obiettivo di gettare luce sulle specificità di genere di questo fenomeno. L'analisi delle traiettorie abitative e sociali di tredici donne rom immigrate in Italia permette di evidenziare l'intreccio tra discriminazione razziale e oppressione di genere, ma anche le forme di resistenza e di "ordinary agency" attraverso cui le donne cercano di fronteggiare le proprie difficoltà e di migliorare la propria situazione.

Since 2015, the notion of hospitality has been a guiding principle and a key demand for individuals and organisations that provide direct support to refugees in Europe. Through a set of interviews conducted with volunteers active in the Refugees Welcome movement in Britain, France and Italy, this article explores the motivations and experiences of individuals who practise (private) hospitality by hosting refugees in their homes. Looking specifically at the ‘responsibility’ that emerges from the practice of hosting, we show that the experience of private hospitality is based on narratives stressing feelings of love and family-like relations, and thus creates the expectation of an affective connection between the host and the guest. We maintain that this process is highly ambivalent as it risks creating and reproducing everyday intimate bordering processes.

Alongside the emergence of various populisms, Brexit and other contemporary geopolitical events have been presented as symptomatic of a generalizing and intensifying sense of uncertainty in the midst of a crisis of (neo)liberalism. In this paper we describe what kind of event Brexit is becoming in the impasse between the UK’s EU referendum in 2016 and its anticipated exit from the EU in 2019. Based on 108 interviews with people in the North‐East of England, we trace how Brexit is variously enacted and felt as an end, advent, a harbinger of worse to come, non‐event, disaster, and betrayed promise. By following how these incommensurate versions of Brexit take form and co‐exist we supplement explanatory and predictive approaches to the geographies of Brexit and exemplify an approach that traces what such geopolitical events become. Specifically, we use the concept of ‘modes of uncertainty’ as a way of discerning patterns in how present uncertainties are lived. A ‘mode of uncertainty’ is a shared set of practices animated by a distinctive mood through which futures are made present and felt. Rather than treat uncertainty as a static, explanatory context, we thus follow how different versions of Brexit are constituted through specific ‘modes of (un)certainty’ – negative hope, national optimisms, apprehensive hopefulness and fantasies of action ‐ that differentiate within a seemingly singular, shared sense of uncertainty.

What happens when Roma people move from the space of an informal settlement to that of a squat of a housing rights movement? In this article, which is based on the analysis of housing squats involving Roma people in the Italian capital city of Rome, I argue that this move is more than a housing solution: it is a new form of contentious and aesthetic politics. In Rome approximately 7,000 Roma face extreme housing deprivation and segregation, in both official and makeshift camps. While different associations have for many years advocated Roma housing inclusion through a minority and human-rights framework, in the aftermath of the 2007/2008 economic crisis an increasing number of Roma have moved to squats set up by social movement activists. The aim of the article is threefold. First, it illustrates the collective action repertoire of Roma-squatting. Secondly, it considers its aesthetic politics, which through spatial dislocation unsettles the racializing discourse endorsed by policymakers that underpins the segregation of the Roma. Finally, this article unpacks the process of politicization of Roma-squatting and discusses the urban frames and material resources that consolidate this transformation through a comparison of four housing squats that Roma people joined.

Since the ‘refugee crisis’ in 2015, civil society across Europe has participated in an unprecedented wave of support towards migrants. This article focuses on the volunteers engaged in this movement and explores how they relate emotions of compassion and evaluations about the ‘deservingness’ of refugees. We do so by analysing the moral dilemmas British volunteers face in their interaction with refugees, and the strategies they develop to avoid the difficulties that emerge when judging who the ‘deserving’ refugees are. We illustrate how these coping strategies lead them to emphasise the practicality of their role and to move beyond logics of deservingness. We argue that these dilemmatic situations reshape the meaning of compassionate acts in ambivalent ways: while reinforcing a tendency to create an emotional distance, they also allow volunteers to challenge idealised representations of refugees and foreground the political nature of their vulnerability.

There are many ways in which ‘groups and individuals can slip in and out of the community of value’ (Anderson 2013, 6). ‘Non- and Failed Citizens’ are two categories of people who are ‘not firmly e...

As citizenship regulations have tightened across the world, protest and activist movements have also emerged to challenge the violence of border and migration control. Positioned at the intersection of citizenship studies and critical geography, this special issue explores how space is conceived, mobilised, used and, in turn, shaped by these political struggles. The authors argue that citizenship is inextricably and irreducibly spatial, and therefore entangled with the material and discursive dimensions of geographical places and scales. Drawing on a rich set of examples, the contributions of this issue trace how space is actively and strategically used within multiple processes of political subjectivation. Focusing on critical sites through which exclusionary logics materialise – such as camps, borders and the urban space, the papers investigate how marginal(ised) political subjects claim their rights in and through space in different and often ambiguous ways, including contestation and solidarity.

This chapter looks at the recent developments in political contention around the Italian Roma camps in Rome. In the last years, an increasing number of Roma have joined political squats set up by urban squatting movements. The chapter introduces ‘Roma squatting’ as a new repertoire of action that emerged in the aftermath of the 2007–2008 economic crisis, which bypasses the ethnicisation of Roma claims through a new alliance with other marginalised categories. It then illustrates how the ambiguity of the Roma policy categorisation has opened up new opportunities, allowing the Roma, who present themselves as squatters, to escape segregation in Roma camps. The third part of the chapter unpacks the process of becoming Roma-squatters: it considers four housing squats that include Roma groups, two of which were evicted while other two are still open. While the book broadly tackles the question of camp persistence, the last section of this chapter examines the spatial and discursive factors that contribute to the enduring of these new spaces of solidarity.

This chapter develops the comparative dimension of the research by looking at how the dynamics observed in the persistence of the Roma camps work in two other cases of temporary yet enduring camps in France: the former migrant transit estates and the current Roma integration villages. It aims to show the relationship between regimes of civil society participation in formal governance and of institutional ambiguity with camp persistence. After summarising the findings that emerged from the analysis of the Roma camps, the chapter presents an analysis of the integration villages and transit estates. The comparison shows that, in both cases, the relatively weaker incorporation of associations in camp governance and the lower ambiguity of the legal framework reduced the polarisation between service providers and advocacy groups, on the one hand, and reinforced the claims of associations challenging governmental policies, on the other. Thus, pro-Roma groups have managed to negotiate the extension of some villages, and pro-migrant associations succeeded in obtaining the closure of the transit estates.

This book interrogates the persistence of Roma and migrant segregation in camps in order to understand how the creation of temporary enclosures can lead to enduring marginalisation. Persistent temporariness has been widely acknowledged as a common aspect of these camps, yet it remains largely under-theorised. Gaja Maestri unpacks the notion of camp persistence to delineate its different regimes and to investigate contributing factors. In order to do so, she develops a comparison between Italy and France and offers a new theorisation of the camp as a site of contentious politics, where the interaction between governmental and non-governmental actors produces different temporal arrangements and forms of segregation. Temporary Camps, Enduring Segregation will be of interest to scholars of political sociology, European comparative politics, and urban geography, specifically to those in the field of camp studies, racial segregation, Romani studies, and urban social movements.

This chapter focusses on the way in which the participation of third sector organisations in the institutional governance of the Italian Roma camps has resulted in their co-optation, by reshaping their financial and social-organisational resources, and weakening and splintering the alliance between pro-Roma associations. It firstly illustrates the incorporation of civil society in welfare arrangements in Italy, focussing on the involvement of pro-Roma and Roma actors in the planning and implementation of the camps. The chapter then discusses three dynamics that led to their co-optation and, subsequently, to the persistence of segregation. First, the contracting out of camp services increased the economic dependency on public funding of certain non-governmental organisations (NGOs), who developed a managerial approach and toned down their claims for Roma inclusion. Secondly, the camp managers can deploy a degree of discretion concerning the interaction of the residents with the outside and the claims they are allowed to voice. Thirdly, the involvement of Roma leaders in the governance of the camps resulted in the silencing of the Roma communities.

This chapter argues that the ambiguity of the Roma camps has facilitated the co-optation of pro-Roma associations. The first part of the chapter discusses the relationship between ambiguity, policy-making and institutional camps, and then focusses on how this ambiguity emerged in Rome. By drawing on policy documents and interviews, the following part scrutinises the ambivalent policy design of the camps, characterised by unclear policy goals and temporal duration, and by an undefined target population. The final section of the chapter unpicks the effects of institutional ambiguity on the framing strategies of subcontracted associations, often accused of contradictorily operating in-between Roma advocacy and compliance with segregation. However, subcontractors draw on this ambiguousness to develop a wide array of discursive strategies that reconcile their work in the camps with the goals of Roma inclusion, which facilitates the persistence of this ghettoisation.

By considering the segregation of Roma in camps in Rome, in this chapter I evaluate the merits and limitations of Wacquant’s work on the ghetto. While rightly placing the state at the core of the analysis of racial segregation dynamics, Wacquant overlooks the complexity of public policies and does not discuss the role of civil society organisations in the (re)production of ghettoisation. I thus suggest integrating this view with theories coming from “camp studies”, which stress the heterogeneity of actors operating around state-enforced camps. Drawing on this approach, I explore the role of third sector associations not only in the planning and implementation of Roma housing segregation but also in the potentially exclusionary effects of their Roma inclusion discourses.

The global proliferation of camps manifests an alarming phenomenon of burgeoning marginalization, and shows that the concept of ‘camp’ is today increasingly crucial to grapple with current changes in the world's geographies of exclusion and inclusion. Specifically, this article focuses on ‘institutional camps’, i.e. created by government agencies in alleged emergency situations and aims to conceptualize sovereignty over this type of camp. After critically reviewing the ongoing scholarly debate on camp sovereignty, I situate my approach within the work of scholars who construe political authority over the camp as comprising a multiplicity of both state and non-state actors. The article contributes to this perspective by drawing on the theory of ‘contentious politics’ advanced by McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly (2001). Through this analytical framework, I suggest construing camp sovereignties as contentious, i.e. inherently constituted by conflicting and ever-evolving power relations that change according to framing strategies, political opportunities, resources and repertoires of action. In order to show the benefits of such approach, the paper focuses on the empirical case of the Italian Roma camps in Rome, through which I show that camp sovereignty is not only fragmented into a multiplicity of actors but is also the result of constant conflict, compromise, negotiation, and co-optation among actors whose frames, opportunities, resources, and repertoires constantly change over time.

What is the political subjectivity of the Roma living in Italian camps? Although the camp prevents the Roma from enjoying a series of rights, it does not fully determine their citizenship status. Indeed, citizenship is always contested and evolving through the interaction of a plurality of actors. By understanding the camp as an ‘assemblage space’, this article aims to unpack the complex political subjectivities of Roma camps-dwellers and to reflect on the struggles and ambiguities characterising the citizenship-making process in camp spaces. Through in-depth interviews conducted with members of non-governmental organisations and social movements in the city of Rome, I investigate the contention over meanings produced around the space of the camp and the Roma political subjectivities. I finally identify and discuss two framing strategies constituting the Roma as right bearers and supporting their demand to housing inclusion: a neoliberal and a ‘right to the city’ discourse that generate entrepreneurial and urban subjects.

Housing facilities and public shelters for Roma in Rome are expensive, highly segregated, and low quality. They have been justified on the basis of the categorization of Roma as nomads, and are challenged and criticized by Roma rights activists and international organizations. Their regulation and actor system have been the object of several judicial inquiries for corruption. But they persist. Mixing different sources (semi-structured interviews, observations, and analysis of budgets) we describe the architecture of different Roma camps in Rome. We focus on four main dimensions of the relations between architecture and space (boundaries, distribution of objects, permanence, and symbolic orders). Previous research in organizational theory has shown that architecture and interior design have a structuring and enacting power for social relations. To explain the persistence of these architectural forms, and the absence of social innovation, we look at the strategic action fields in which these camps are embedded, discussing the relevance of “invisible” relations.

The paper investigates how the economic crisis and austerity politics affect the strategies of pro-Roma non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and movements that fight for Roma access to housing in Rome. In the last 20 years, the main social housing policy for the Roma adopted by the City of Rome consisted of the so-called ‘equipped villages’, that is, equipped areas with Portakabins and basic facilities. Designed as a temporary housing solution to accommodate the Roma population living in the slums of the Italian capital, these villages nonetheless persist, hosting an increasing number of Roma evicted from informal settlements. As a result, these villages are now harshly criticised for being highly segregating, for being overcrowded with worsening sanitary conditions and for not enabling integration. Furthermore, the recent economic recession and austerity politics are putting a strain on Roma integration policies. The increase of social tensions and unrest, the rise of populist parties and of anti-immigration (and anti-Roma) attitudes do not facilitate the inclusion of the Roma minority, in Italy as in other European countries. What effects are these dynamics having on the capacity of pro-Roma associations arguing against the segregation of the equipped villages and for the development of alternative social housing for the Roma? Although it may seem that the crisis has mainly negative effects on the possibility of insisting on Roma integration, the pro-Roma NGOs and movements considered in this paper show how post-crisis austerity can be mobilised as a new resource for action. The paper focuses on two strategies using the crisis as a frame and base for contesting the segregation of the Roma: the first is to highlight the costs of segregation and the second is to mobilise a new form of solidarity based on the housing crisis.