Metropolitics

#IStayCamp. Health Conditions, Food Deprivation and Solidarity Problems in the First Days of Lockdown in the Roma Villages of Rome

Carlo Stasolla & Tommaso Vitale — 2020-04-28T05:00:00Z

Activist research in formal settlements of emergency housing in Rome during the Covid‑19 lockdown reveals how such settlements struggle with public health concerns and access to food, among other deprivations, and underscores the need for emergency interventions.
On March 9, 2020, “in order to counteract and contain the spread of the Covid‑19 virus,” Italian prime minister Giuseppe Conte signed a decree implementing a complete lockdown aimed at “avoiding any movement of individuals.” The

- From the Field / Roma, Rome, Italy, camps, Covid-19, lockdown, health, food, solidarity, coronavirus

Dwelling—Living—Waiting: Transformations of a Refugee Reception Camp in Germany

Nina Riewe — 2017-11-21T06:00:00Z

In wealthy German cities, which have received tens of thousands of refugees from the Middle East and Northern Africa in recent years, officials have scrambled to provide adequate physical accommodation. In this paper, Nina Riewe explores refugees' negotiation of space in an initial reception camp in Hamburg. Considered under law to be “dwelling” but not actually “living” there, they continually struggle to maintain privacy, sociability, and physical and psychological comfort in a place

- From the Field / camps, refugees, Germany, migration, space, migrants, refugee camps, state of exception, zones of exception, Agamben, Hamburg, asylum

Snowbirds' Gift Economy in the Arizona Desert

David Frati — 2017-11-07T06:00:00Z

Each year, 200,000 retired people spend the winter in and around the small town of Quartzsite, Arizona, in the Sonoran desert. Some 50,000 of them live in informal housing: campers, tents, cars and trucks, and self-constructed cabins. In the field with the most economically marginal of these “desert snowbirds,” David Frati observes the complex gift economy that structures their social lives.
Every winter, retired snowbirds reach the small town of Quartzsite, Arizona, one of the few places in

- From the Field / camps, care, housing, alternative housing, United States, ethnography, sociabilities, poverty, assistance, informal housing, Arizona, money, resourcefulness, desert, gift economy, nomadism, retirement, snowbirds, concern for others, neighborliness

Public authorities and Roma populations in Turin

Elisabetta Rosa & translated by Oliver Waine — 2015-03-05T05:50:00Z

For the last three decades or so, European cities have had to deal with the issue of land occupation by migrant populations from Eastern Europe. The city of Turin has adopted various measures with respect to the “Roma question”: the closure of certain illegal camps, tolerance of others – facilitating their consolidation – and the creation of supervised “official” camps. Despite the apparent contradictions, these policies in fact all lead to similar outcomes: spatial relegation and the

- From the Field / camps, Italy, exclusion, public policy, migration, expulsions, Turin, Roma, vulnerable housing

Migration and globalization: a tragic tale

Olivier Thomas & translated by Oliver Waine — 2013-10-30T05:55:00Z

At a time when flows of capital, goods and information are increasing, more and more material, ideological and institutional obstacles are limiting the movements of international migrants. Two works published in 2012 propose a critical analysis of this state control of inward migrants.
The works of Marc Bernardot and the Migreurop network provide two complementary views that enable us to grasp the political, economic and social stakes of Western nations' migration policies, and more

- Reviews / Europe, camps, immigration, globalization, migration, borders, detention centres

Haiti after the earthquake: camps, shanty towns and housing shortages

Gerry L'Étang & translated by Oliver Waine — 2012-05-02T09:14:17Z

In Haiti, in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake, public squares became the sites of makeshift camps to provide shelter to victims made homeless by the disaster. Since then, their status has changed to become places of hope of justice in the face of the inequalities of a nationwide housing shortage. As in other contexts, occupying public spaces appears to be a means of fighting for the right to housing.
On 12 January 2010 at 4.53 p.m., Haiti suffered the most devastating natural disaster in

- From the Field / camps, catastrophe, refugees, public space, housing, disaster, risk, shanty town, displaced population, Haiti, natural risks

Housing the “harkis”: long-term segregation

Abderahmen Moumen & translated by Oliver Waine — 2012-04-04T04:55:00Z

The end of the Algerian War saw the arrival en masse of thousands of pieds-noirs and harkis in mainland France. From the camps of the 1960s to the estates where these repatriated populations were housed until the 1980s, the fate decided for the second of these groups by the “homeland” was one of sustainable segregation.
---- Series: How the Algerian War shaped French cities The arrival of returnees from Algeria in 1962 – the year of its independence – represented a demographic upheaval in

- From the Field / camps, segregation, housing, Algerian War, harkis, returnees, repatriation

Corridors of exile: a worldwide web of camps

Michel Agier & translated by Eric Rosencrantz — 2010-11-25T21:19:51Z

Urban anthropologist Michel Agier describes how Europe controls migrant populations, keeping them “locked out” of our cities. He also shows how a new, quasi-urban realm is painfully emerging inside the camps themselves.
The topography of migrants in the world at large and in Europe in particular forms a network of what I call “corridors of exile”. In the following, I focus on a few aspects thereof: viz. European migration control policies; the worldwide web of camps for refugees, illegal

- Essays / camps, refugees, city, migration