An archipelago of camps: Do we learn anything from history?

juliette frontier

Juliette Frontier is a modern history final year undergraduate at the University of East Anglia, having just completed her degree. Her dissertation explored the relationship between non-governmental organisations and the French state in the reception of refugees in France from 1945 to the present day. She has a long-standing interest in this subject; she currently volunteers with New Routes, a local NGO that supports the integration of refugees and asylum seekers and has also worked with French grassroots organisations in Calais to support displaced people with hot meals, material, medical and legal aid. She is about to begin work as an editor and contributor on the Refugee History website and anticipates taking a Masters in Forced Migration and Refugee Studies in 2021.  

‘The camp is no longer a historical anomaly but the nomos of the contemporary social space’.[1] These oft-quoted words of Giorgio Agamben have led historians like Dan Stone to argue that we are in the midst of a new century of camps.[2] While Zygmunt Bauman proclaimed the twentieth century as a ‘century of camps’, it is increasingly evident that the twenty-first century has succumbed to a ‘growing global archipelago of encampments’.[3] Though Agamben offers much wisdom on the socio-philosophical aspects of camps as a modern phenomenon, he edges perhaps too far in his assertion that camps have ‘replaced cities’ to become the new ‘social structure of modernity’.[4] This raises the fundamental question of whether humanity has learnt, or is capable of learning from the history of camps. The existence today of refugee, re-education and detention camps, amongst a plethora of others, forcefully indicates that despite the memory and history of camps of the twentieth century, camps continue to haunt supposedly modern societies on a global scale. This analysis seeks to understand the proliferation of camps as spaces of incarceration in the twenty-first century primarily through the lens of refugee camps. Such proliferation can be best understood conceptually through a Foucauldian analysis of camps as technologies of power, through Agamben’s concept of bare life and more broadly, through the notion that camps exhibit a reflection of society, characterised by a prevailing sentiment of indifference towards the plight of human suffering. Additionally, it must be considered that we are living though the greatest mass displacement of people since world war two, a crisis which seems set to worsen with a climate emergency that threatens to displace millions of people. This analysis seeks to map the archipelago of camps in the current century, using France as its case-study, leading to an understanding of camps as being far from synonymous to totalitarianism. Rather, camps have become part of both the history and present landscapes of almost all supposedly modern states. The failure of human rights legislation, the role of the media in diffusing the notion of the camp and the intricacies of memory towards the history of camps, collectively assist in conceptualising and comprehending how camps have seemingly survived and evolved to occupy a significant biopolitical space in the modern world.

Firstly, it is necessary to map the terrain of camps in the twenty-first century. Dan Stone convincingly argues that the current century is already positioned to be a century of camps in light of the current refugee crisis. It is important to note from the outset however, that the frenzied report of a ‘crisis’ and ‘emergency’ has largely been engineered by the media. This is symptomatic of the tabloid culture in the UK, with headlines denouncing refugees as ‘invaders’ and even ‘terrorists’.[5] Moving beyond the rhetoric of ‘crisis’, displacement is not a new phenomenon, but rather one that has centuries old history. Today, Andrea Pitzer argues that refugee camps exist primarily to ‘isolate refugees’, forcing them onto inhospitable terrain with the aim of discouraging border crossings.[6] Stuck in a state of purgatory, refugees often find themselves unable to return home, yet also unable to cross borders. Pitzer claims that many refugee camps today display quasi-concentration camp conditions.[7] Though this is seemingly a bold claim, there lays a certain reality to her argument. In Greece for example, the camps are some of the most overcrowded in the world, with dire sanitation and wholly inadequate accommodation. In April this year a significant part of the Chios camp burnt down, leaving vulnerable people without shelter.[8] In order to understand the ever-burgeoning growth of refugee camps in the twenty-first century, we ought to turn to the notion that camps offer sovereign powers the ‘illusion of a simple solution’.[9]

Agamben’s Homo Sacer is highly pertinent to the refugee camp and the issue of displaced people, stressing in particular that the refugee unsettles the relation between the state and its citizens.[10] According to Agamben, the whole notion of human rights is thrown into the air, human rights signify the rights of man, yet for sovereign powers, the social contract runs between its citizens and the nation-state. Thus, the state negates its humanitarian responsibilities towards refugees, creating a dichotomy of belonging and unbelonging between citizens and so-called ‘non citizens’.[11] The encampment, even incarceration, of ‘non-citizens’ allows the nation-state to celebrate its ‘sovereign subjectivity’ as a historical achievement to legitimise its border regime by proclaiming the state’s raison d’être as protecting its own citizens.[12] Citizenship here, is used as a tool by the state to determine who is “entitled” to its protection, and ultimately to decide who has the right to have rights. In this light, Elizabeth Dauphinee sees the logic of the camp where the law of the state that protects must also destroy, in the same vein, the law that makes live must also let die.[13] In turn, the camp presents the seemingly simple and obvious solution, it acts as a means to render life invisible and to silence the voices of ‘non-citizens’, in this case, refugees.[14]

More broadly, the failed European-wide asylum system deliberately renders life invisible as the refugee is ‘designed to be forgotten by the judicial system’.[15] The camp is thus presented as Europe’s unofficial answer to the influx of those seeking asylum; a labyrinth of camps across Europe is offered as the de facto solution.[16]  This is at the core of Agamben’s oft-cited idea of refugees as ‘bare life’, where human life in the camp is left at the mercy of the sovereign power, often with no recourse to legal protections. The concept of the nation-state, citizenship, bare life and invisibility are therefore pivotal in understanding the existence of camps in the twenty-first century, that exist despite the history and memory of the twentieth century as a century of camps. As we shall return to later, it is particularly this troubling concept of invisibility which has taken root in modern day refugee camps.

Alongside such concepts, the Calais ‘Jungle’ and the broader context of France and the memory of displacement during World War Two, assist in illuminating the existence of camps in the current century. In many ways, while the presence of the camp in France has increased in the twenty-first century, the visibility of those who reside within them, has been greatly diminished. In the 1970s, France confronted at last the ‘Vichy Syndrome’. Partly in the spirit of repentance, France in the 1970s received 120,000 ‘boat people’ fleeing the Vietnam War who had taken refuge in overcrowded camps off the coast of Malaysia.[17] Yet the spirit of welcome and hospitality quickly faded from public discourse. In the post 9/11 world, security fears override humanitarian considerations as the hostile environment stands at the forefront of the French state’s policy towards refugees.

Turning to our case-study of Calais illustrates the use, even manipulation, of historical memory by both pro and anti- refugee groups and political parties, demonstrating how memory is employed as a vehicle to achieve political or humanitarian goals. As Ilana Feldman notes the camp is both a humanitarian and political space.[18] Nowhere was this more evident than in the infamous Calais ‘Jungle’ that existed on a disused landfill site; walls, fences and police brutality sought to isolate, exhaust and deter refugees from attempting to cross the Channel. In response, non-governmental actors in France and the UK petitioned and continue to petition, both the French and British state to stop the policy of neglect and abandonment in Calais.[19] Using the memory of the 1970s and the welcome of the ‘boat people’, they assert the notion that France has a tradition of welcome towards refugees, while also invoking the memory and history of France as the supposed land of human rights, making reference to the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man.[20] However, history and collective memory are also employed by far-right populist parties across Europe to foster a climate of anti-immigration and fear. In France, le Rassemblement National manipulates historical memory to contest the presence of camps in Northern France. The populist narrative plays on the patriotism in France associated with the resistance movement during the second world war. Far-right parties question why refugees in France should be given sanctuary, claiming that like French resistance fighters seventy years ago, they ought to ‘stay and fight’ in their native countries.[21] It seems that the lived experience of displacement that many French citizens faced during the occupation, as well as the signing of the UN Refugee Convention by the French state in 1951, has faded from collective memory.[22] As such, the polemical nature of the memory of camps in the twentieth century as explored through the lens of the relationship between the French state and refugees, reveals the limitations of our capacity to learn from history when historical memory is employed as both a tool and a weapon. This provides a crucial backdrop in comprehending the existence of camps, such as those in Calais, in the twenty-first century.

It is necessary to return now to Agamben’s notion that the camp is the fundamental biopolitical paradigm of modern Western societies.[23] The study of camps has historically centred largely on the Nazi concentration camps and the Soviet Gulag, which lay at the core of the totalitarian model that emerged in Western scholarship during the Cold War. Camps were regarded as the most ‘intense and concentrated’ manifestation of totalitarian regimes.[24] Hannah Arendt in The Origins of Totalitarianism and later Tzvetan Todorov, argued that the system of camps and terror were inherent to totalitarianism. The camp reflected totalitarian societies; the secrecy, social hierarchy and dominance of the state machine highlighted that totalitarian states were camps in their own right.[25] However, Todorov pushes this narrative too far, arguing that totalitarian violence cannot credibly be compared to the ‘legitimate violence of the lawful state’ in supposed democracies in the Western sphere.[26] The detention centres on the US- Mexico border, as well as the constellation of refugee camps across Europe and the horrifying levels of police violence displaced people encounter, as documented in numerous Human Rights Watch reports, greatly contest Todorov’s analysis of totalitarianism and the camp.[27] Furthermore, Todorov asserts that the de-humanization of populations is at the heart of the relationship between the camp and totalitarianism; by rendering humans into bare life and ‘non persons’, totalitarian regimes create a mass of people, stripping away any sense of individuality.[28] However, this argument can equally be contested as the de-humanization of people is at the core of understanding the existence of camps globally. It is equally paradoxical that Todorov dedicates much space to an analysis of Arendt’s Banality of Evil, which presents Adolf Eichmann not as a monster, but as a ‘terrifyingly normal’ human being.[29] If evil is banal, then surely the camp is not unique to totalitarian regimes. Although Todorov acknowledges that the plague of indifference and silent complicity crosses ideological boundaries, it is his insistence that camps are the unique product of totalitarianism that appears unconvincing. In addressing this imbalance of scholarly focus on camps as a phenomenon bound to totalitarianism, Pitzer’s recent work is greatly welcomed in demonstrating how the camp figures in almost every nation’s history.[30] Camps fundamentally exist in response to some degree of crisis, though in many cases their existence is a testimony to the state’s lack of response. As the nation state cannot lawfully incarcerate displaced peoples or asylum seekers, the camp exists in the Western sphere as a means of negating humanitarian responsibility. It appears once more as the ultimate solution to an “undesirable” problem.

Similarly, adopting a Foucauldian analysis of technologies of discipline and power reveals that the camp is used by supposed liberal democracies as a spatial political technology to maintain a group of ‘non-desirable’ people in a concentrated space. In essence, a form of unofficial imprisonment.[31] Camps hold these ‘outsiders’ in a state of limbo at the margins of society, as a result, the camp becomes a space of ‘permanent temporariness’.[32] Therefore, in discrediting Western triumphalism and the notion that the camp is unequivocally intertwined with totalitarianism, it becomes apparent that supposed democratic states are not immune to the use of camps, as the twentieth century has shown, and the current century continues to tragically bear testimony to.

Despite this seemingly bleak outlook of the camp as ubiquitous, it can be argued that lessons are learnt from history. A powerful case-study here is the repeal in the United States in 1971 of the Emergency Detention Act. Enacted in 1950, it allowed presidents to detain any person suspected as a threat during the declaration of any national emergency.[33] The law was nicknamed ‘the concentration camp law’, employed by the US government as an instrument of ‘preventative detention’ of supposed disloyal citizens in the era of anti-communist hysteria and McCarthyism.[34] The repeal garnered much support through the invoking of the collective memory of Japanese- American internment during World War Two. Sansei, third generation Japanese Americans in the late 1960s provided much grass-roots support for the repeal, spurred on by their conviction that they must at all costs prevent the ‘revival’ of internment camps.[35] US collective memory of Japanese American internment shifted from the camps as a form of military necessity to be seen as a racial injustice. Significantly, the relocation centres were branded as concentration camps by the Japanese American Citizens League.[36] At the Congress hearings in 1971, Justice Goldenberg declared ‘we have learnt from that experience’, referring to the internment camps of World War Two. The judges unanimously supported the repeal of the Emergency Detention Act.[37] The repeal in 1971 by President Richard Nixon is thus of great significance in revealing the enduring importance of the collective memory of Japanese American civilian internment and demonstrates that repealing the law went hand in hand with the notion of avoiding the repetition of history.

However, it is indispensable to avoid romanticising the repeal as an achievement in the history of camps. The question arises of whether we can legitimately celebrate this repeal when US detention centres on the Mexico border exist today as quasi-concentration camps, where parents are separated from children, and many are incarcerated for indefinite periods of time.[38] Therefore, the history of the camp must not to be regarded as one of linear progression. Though the landscape of the twenty-first century is no longer tarred by Soviet forced labour camps, neither Nazi concentration camps, nor American internment camps, it must be acknowledged that detention, refugee and re-education camps remain embedded in the social fabric of today, it is to this that we now turn.

In order to further an understanding of the camp in today’s climate, it is essential to consider Arendt’s notion of ‘rightlessness’. The prominent philosopher explained that in the camp, inmates are ‘treated as if they no longer existed, as if what happened to them were no longer of interest to anybody, as if they were already dead’.[39] This is particularly poignant of refugee camps, where vulnerable populations are marginalised to the fringes of society in a bid to limit mobility and to deter border crossings. Once more, the camp appears as the simple solution to an ‘undesirable’ problem. The refugee camp serves to render bare life invisible, heightening the divisions of ‘us’ and ‘them’, and creating spaces of exclusion and inclusion.[40] Nowhere is this idea of invisibility more present than in the camps in Calais today. The head of the French organisation SALAM told me that,  

‘Calais is not spoken about anymore. It’s over. People have to be invisible. That’s why they are harassed so much by the police’.[41]

As Elizabeth Holzer convincingly argues, the camp has undeniably become the visible symbol of failed human rights campaigns and declarations.[42] Here, bare life is pitted against sovereign power with no access to legal recourse.  The United Nations 1951 Refugee Convention once hailed as the ‘Magna Carter’ for refugees, today falls far short in providing adequate legal refugee protection. The language of the convention is revealing; its articles are preceded by statements such as, ‘urges the government’ and ‘in the express hope’, reflecting the non-binding nature of the convention, which pitifully rests on the ‘good-will’ of its signatories.[43] Holzer notes that in Kenya in the 1990s, in the midst of economic chaos and the influx of refugee arrivals, protection for refugees collapsed, new arrivals failed to be registered or accommodated as security pressures superseded Kenya’s commitment to refugee protection.[44] More broadly, today’s pitfall of international refugee protection lies in the global inequalities of the North-South divide, where the Southern hemisphere lacks the resources to support its refugee population, while the Northern hemisphere defends its wealth with fortressed borders.[45] Returning to Arendt’s notion of rightlessness, it is evident that displaced people today, as was the case throughout the twentieth-century, are denied the right to have rights. Similarly to the weakness of the Hague Convention for prisoners of war, (a discussion of which is unfortunately beyond the scope of this essay), the flaws in international refugee protection strongly indicate that we have not learnt from history the fatal ramifications of inadequate human rights protection. This will grimly remain an irreconcilable issue for future generations until the interests of the nation-state no longer supersede the cause of human rights.

While the invisibility of the camp and the shortcomings of human rights protection are key components in understanding the existence of camps as places of unlawful incarceration in the twenty-first century, their significance cannot be fully understood without considering the role of the media in the proliferation of the camp. At the turn of the twentieth century, early forms of media allowed the idea of the camp to be diffused to a global audience. Jonathan Hyslop traces the origins of the concentration camp to South Africa and the Boer War.[46] Employed under British colonial rule, the concentration camp took its place in political and military life, where Hyslop argues that it ‘lay like an unexploded shell, awaiting its future moment of detonation’.[47] Its depiction in newspapers and the growing mediatisation of war rendered the camp as a weapon of war in the public imagination. In a similar vein, Alexander Solzhenitsyn prophesised in the 1950s that in the USSR the idea of encampment and the ‘Gulag Archipelago had already begun its malignant life and would shortly metastasize throughout the whole body of the nation.’[48] Yet while the media seemed to legitimise the use of camps in the early twentieth century, it was also used by human rights campaigners. As early as the Hague Convention in 1907, non-governmental organisations sought to mobilise popular support in favour of civilian protection during wartime.[49]

This multifaceted role of the media continues today as tabloid depictions of refugees with their faces masked and labelled as ‘invaders’ and ‘terrorists’ serve to de-humanise and render bare life invisible in the camp while also legitimising the camp as a place of confinement. However, the media also provides an enduring channel for a counter-discourse to re-humanise the residents of the camp. A crucial lesson that resonates from the history of the camps is the importance of the media’s counter-discourse, the agency of those residing in the camp and the role of non-state actors in protesting against the policies of the nation-state. As Todorov reasons, the greatest lesson one can take from the history of the camps is that silence is the greatest crime.[50] Here it is helpful to consider Adam Ramadan’s critique of Agamben’s Homo Sacer which reveals the limitation of the concept of bare life.[51] Bare life is in many ways an overly reductive and dehistoricising concept, as it denies the agency and the voice of refugees. Likewise, the presence of non-governmental actors in refugee camps contests the notion of bare life versus sovereign power. Humanitarian groups invest much time and expense into petitioning states in order to hold them to account to their humanitarian responsibilities. Equally, there have been many instances throughout the last century of refugee mobilisation that discredit the notion of the camp as a site of disempowered bare life.[52] Holzer categorises scholars who focus on bare life and rightlessness as post structural scholars, while noting the emergence of a new school of scholarship; legal consciousness scholars.[53] Holzer focuses on the 2007 protests in refugee camps in Ghana where refugees chanted ‘we have human rights’ and called for ‘durable solutions’ such as resettlement to end the confinement of the camp.[54] It is therefore persuasive that the camp is a biopolitical space which can be challenged.

At the same time, despite the significant growth in the interdisciplinary literature on the camp, it has largely remained a discussion confined to academic circles. There is thus a pressing need to encourage conversations about the continued existence of camps in the modern world. The so-called re-education centres in China for Uyghurs for example, powerfully highlight that camps continue to exist as closely guarded state secrets and these re-education centres have many parallels to the camps of the twentieth century.[55] For example, re-education was apparent in the Gulag, while the ethnic targeting of the Uyghurs also has uncomfortable parallels to Nazi concentration camps. Ultimately, the question for the modern age is how can we learn from history, if the history of camps in the twentieth century does not become universal knowledge?  As Todorov remarked, ‘if we fail to master the past, it may master us.’[56]

Notwithstanding the importance of these words, the significant obstacle facing today in learning the lessons from the history and memory of twentieth-century camps is the prevailing sentiment of indifference. Primo Levi confronted this indifference as he recounted his experience of Auschwitz in If This is a Man, where Levi lamented that, ‘I could not help noticing that my listeners do not follow me. In fact, they are completely indifferent’.[57] Levi denounces this ‘voluntary blindness’, where citizens turn a blind eye to the plight of those in the camp as it is easier than confronting a traumatic past.[58] Similarly, Elizabeth Dauphinee’s concept of the ‘logic of forgetting’ illuminates the polemical nature of memory, where it is not sufficient to be indifferent, but that our society encourages us to forget the plight of others. These concepts undoubtedly provide fruitful avenues for further research by psychologists and historians alike. Moreover, many survivors describe feeling that their memory of the camp belongs to ‘the realm of the unspeakable’.[59] If we are to learn anything from history it ought to be that indifference and silence have fatal consequences. Fostering an open dialogue on the memory and history of the camp cannot preclude survivors’ testimonies, however hard they may be to engage with.

It is undeniable however, that memory and notions of collective memory are controversial and frequently lead to the ‘misuse of memory’ and a ‘battle over the past’.[60] As explored earlier, memory in France of displacement during the occupation, as well as France’s reception of Vietnamese refugees in the 1970s is highly politicised and employed by both humanitarian groups and far-right parties to further their agendas. Therefore, it is seemingly impossible to learn from the history and memory of camps of the twentieth century when historical memory is almost always employed as a political tool, and weapon, in the case of the far-right politics. Equally, despite the achievement of the repeal of the US Emergency Detention Act and the invoking of the memory of Japanese American civilian internment to this aim, it is evident that despite this seemingly positive employment of collective memory, its celebration is marred by the existence of quasi-concentration camps on the US-Mexico border. Meanwhile, the resurgence of anti-Semitism and neo-fascism in the twenty-first century are a deeply troubling signal of history repeating itself.[61] It is, as Claudio Minca argues, absurd that even with the memory of the Holocaust and the lens of the twentieth century as a century of camps that we continue to live with camps on our doorstep.[62] As Minca persuades, ‘we cannot morally accept to ignore the camp, instead we all must be politically aware of the existence of camps next door’.[63] Just thirty-three kilometres from the coast of the UK lie several refugee camps in Northern France, were refugees are near incarcerated by inhumane conditions and unrelenting police violence. Despite the memory and history of camps of the twentieth century, the camp today is neither a historical fact nor anomaly of the past, but rather is becoming an increasingly fixed space in the landscape of the supposed ‘modern age’.[64]

It seems fitting to conclude with the ending of the novel The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, ‘Of course all this happened a long time ago and nothing like that could ever happen again. Not in this day and age.’[65] Ironic rather than reassuring, this veiled message perhaps warns against the idealism of learning from history and the somewhat naïve narrative of history as a linear progression into “modernity”. As we have seen, the camp has become in many ways the nomos of the twenty-first century.[66] There are disturbing points of similarity between camp systems of the twentieth century and detention, re-education and refugee camps today. In echoing Minca and Todorov’s words, we must not be bystanders to the proliferation and normalisation of the camp.[67] Challenging the nation-state’s recourse to camps as a simple and seemingly effective solution to population management is indispensable to combat a sense of amnesia towards the history of the camps. This analysis has sought to bring together a kaleidoscope of factors and concepts to illuminate how and why camps continue to form part of the landscape of the twenty-first century. The manipulation and politicisation of the memory of camps of the twentieth century demonstrate the difficulties in learning from the past when it is employed for political ends. Meanwhile, the omnipresence of the camp across the globe has discredited the idea that the camp is unique to totalitarianism, demonstrating that the lack of enforceable human rights protection and prevailing sentiment of indifference are issues that cross borders and ideologies and have therefore contributed to the twenty-first century as the new century of camps.[68] Combatting the nation-state’s attempts to render camp residents invisible, while also acknowledging that those held in camps today are more than mere bare life and have important agency in challenging their de-humanisation, is pivotal if we are to learn anything from history. Ultimately, the story of the camp concerns a tragic past, a shameful present and a wholly uncertain future.

[1] G. Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Translated by D. Heller-Roazen, (Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics, 1998), 166.

[2] D. Stone, Concentration Camps: A Short History, (Oxford University Press, 2017), 109.

[3] C. Minca, ‘Geographies of the camp’, in Political Geography, no. 49 (2015), 74.

[4] G. Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, 1.

[5] P. Allen, and N. Baker, ‘Calais Jungle migrant camp demolition begins as furious refugees torch tents and clash with police in last-ditch protests’, in The Sun, (October 2016), [https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2046884/calais-jungle-migrant-camp-demolition-begins-asfurious-refugees-torch-tents-and-clash-with-police-in-last-ditch-protests/, Accessed 1st November 2019] and

J. Dunn, ‘Cleared... at last! Infamous Calais Jungle camp is finally destroyed as the last shelters are demolished’, in Daily Mail, (October 2016), [https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article3890940/Cleared-Infamous-Calais-Jungle-camp-finally-destroyed-shelters-demolished.html, accessed 1st November 2019].

[6] A. Pitzer, One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps, (Little Brown, Boston, 2017), 7.

[7] See: A. Pitzer, One Long Night, 7 and K. Neumann, and G. Tavan, ‘Does history matter? Making and debating citizenship, immigration and refugee policy in Australia and New Zeland (Australian National University Press, 2009), 65.

[8] ‘Fire wrecks Greek refugee camp after unrest over woman's death’ in The Guardian, (19 April 2020), [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/19/fire-wrecks-greek-migrant-camp-after-iraqi-death-sparks-unrest, accessed 1st May 2020]

[9] A. Pitzer, One Long Night, 14.

[10] G. Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, 179.

[11] E. Dauphinee, and C. Masters, The logics of biopower and the War on Terror: living, dying, surviving, (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 234.

[12] Ibid, 231.

[13] Ibid, 234.

[14] Ibid, 232.

[15] Ibid, 231.

[16] T. Davies, and A. Isakjee, ‘Geography, migration and abandonment in the Calais refugee camp’ in Political Geography, vol. 49, (2015), 93.

[17] ‘Un bateau pour le Vietnam : quand la France découvrait les boat-peoples’, in France Inter, (2015), [https://www.franceinter.fr/emissions/affaires-sensibles/affaires-sensibles-24-septembre-2015, accessed 1st December 2019]

[18] I. Feldman, ‘What is a camp? Legitimate refugee lives in spaces of long-term displacement’ in Geoforum, vol. 66, (2015), 244.

[19] T. Davies, and A. Isakjee, ‘Geography, migration and abandonment in the Calais refugee camp’ in Political Georgraphy, vol. 49, (2015), 94.

[20] Help Refugees, (July 2018), [https://helprefugees.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Police-Harrassment-of-Volunteers-in-Calais-1.pdf, accessed 1st December 2019]

[21] B. Roger-Petit, ‘Réfugiés: comment Marine Le Pen s'approprie l'histoire de la Résistance’, (2015) in Challenges, newspaper, [https://www.challenges.fr/politique/refugies-comment-marine-le-pen-vole-l-histoire-de-la-resistance_64047, accessed 30th October 2019]

[22] United Nations, 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees [https://www.unhcr.org/uk/3b66c2aa10, accessed 1st November 2019].

[23] G. Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, 166.

[24] T. Todorov, Facing the extreme: moral life in the concentration camps, Translated by A. Denner, and A. Pollack, (London: Phoenix, 2000), 28.

[25] Ibid, 28.

[26] Ibid, 29.

[27] Human Rights Watch, ‘“Like Living in Hell”: Police Abuses against Child and Adult Migrants in Calais’, (New York, 2017), [https://www.hrw.org/report/2017/07/26/living-hell/police-abusesagainst-child-and-adult-migrants-calais, [Accessed 28th October 2019].

[28] T. Todorov, Facing the extreme: moral life in the concentration camps, 159.

[29] Ibid, 124.

[30] A. Pitzer, One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps, 15.

[31] M. Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, Translation by D. Macey, (Picador New York, 2003), 214 and C. Minca, ‘Geographies of the camp’, in Political Geography, no. 49 (2015), 80.

[32] C. Minca, ‘Geographies of the camp’, (2015), 79.

[33] M. Izumi, ‘Prohibiting “American Concentration Camps” in Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 74, No. 2 (2005), 165.

[34] Ibid, 166.

[35] Ibid, 174.

[36] Ibid, 192.

[37] Ibid, 180.

[38] A. Pitzer, One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps, 7.

[39] H. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (Schocken Books, 1951), 445.

[40] B. Diken, ‘From refugee camps to gated communities: biopolitics and the end of the city,’ in Citizenship Studies, vol 8, no.1, (2004), 85.

[41] Personal interview with Yolaine, head of SALAM: Soutenons, Aidons, Luttons, Agissons pour les Migrants et les pays en difficulté. (July 2019) Translation from French: “On ne parle plus de Calais. C’est terminé. Pour eux, il n’y a rien. Il faut que les gens soient invisibles. C’est pour ça qu’ils sont autant harcelés par la police. »

[42] E. Holzer, ‘What Happens to Law in a Refugee Camp?’ in Law & Society Review, Vol. 47, No. 4, (2013), 838.

[43] United Nations, 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, [https://www.unhcr.org/uk/3b66c2aa10, Accessed 1st November 2019]

[44] E. Holzer, ‘What Happens to Law in a Refugee Camp? (2013), 845.

[45] Ibid, 853.

[46] J. Hyslop, ‘The Invention of the Concentration Camp: Cuba, Southern Africa and the Philippines, 1896–1907’, in South African Historical Journal, vol. 63, no.2, (2011), 270.

[47] Ibid, 274.

[48] A. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956 An Experiment in Literary Investigation 1-II, Translated from Russian by T. Whitney (London: Harvill Press, 1973), 43.

[49] J. Hyslop, ‘The Invention of the Concentration Camp’, (2011), 270.

[50] T. Todorov, Facing the extreme: moral life in the concentration camps, 290.

[51] A. Ramadan, ‘Spatialising the refugee camp’ in Institute of British Geographers, vol. 38, no. 1, (2013), 68.

[52] Ibid, 71.

[53] E. Holzer, ‘What Happens to Law in a Refugee Camp?’ (2013), 842.

[54] Ibid, 854.

[55] E. Graham-Harrison, ‘‘Allow no escapes': leak exposes reality of China's vast prison camp network’ in The Guardian, (24th November 2019), [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/24/china-cables-leak-no-escapes-reality-china-uighur-prison-camp, accessed 1st December 2019]

[56] T. Todorov, Facing the extreme: moral life in the concentration camps, 30.

[57] P. Levi, If This Is a Man: The Truce (London, Everyman’s Library, 2000), 64.

[58] T. Todorov, Facing the extreme: moral life in the concentration camps, 244.

[59] C. Minca, ‘Geographies of the camp’, (2015), 75.

[60] C. Thonfeld. ‘Memories of former World War Two forced labourers - an international comparison’ in Oral History, PAST AND PRESENT, Vol. 39, No. 2, (2011), 36.

[61] B. Kaplan, ‘Memory as Fluid Process: James Friedman's "12 Nazi Concentration Camps" and Gunter Demnig's Stolpersteine’ in Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, Vol. 37, No.1, (2019), 64.

[62] C. Minca, ‘Geographies of the camp’, (2015), 80.

[63] Ibid, 80.

[64] L. Zannettino, ‘From Auschwitz to mandatory detention: biopolitics, race, and human rights in the Australian refugee camp,’ in The International Journal of Human Rights, vol 16, no. 7, (2012), 1096.

[65] Ibid, 1094.

[66] G. Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, 166.

[67] C. Minca, ‘Geographies of the camp’, (2015), 80 and T. Todorov, Facing the extreme: moral life in the concentration camps, 242.

[68] D. Stone, Concentration Camps: A Short History, (Oxford University Press, 2017), 109.

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