Precarious encampments in hostile border zones: The methodological challenges of and possibilities for studying contingent camps

Abstract

AbstractIn migration studies, the space of the camp is most often understood as a fixed, humanitarian or institutional space of containment. In recent years, however, hardened border control strategies have given rise to contingent and precarious forms of encampment that stretch the scope of what we might understand as camp spaces. This paper is a methodological intervention on the study of “contingent camps”: encampments that are not fixed but dynamic and shifting, caught in constant cycles of destruction by state authorities and reinvention by those who inhabit them. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with migrant people inhabiting contingent camps in and around the borderlands at Calais (France) and Tangier (Morocco) between 2017 and 2020, this paper reflects on the methodological challenges of, and possibilities for, carrying out research in these spaces that lack fixed boundaries and thresholds in which to anchor a field strategy. In response to the uncertain ontology of contingent camps and their obscurity, I propose the simultaneous pursuit of embodied ethnography, a forensic scrutiny of camp materialities, and the study of affective atmospheres through attention to the immaterial practices of their residents. Finally, this paper stresses the importance of strategic method selection in these contexts, not only as a tool for approaching and exploring contingent camps, but also as a vector for actively bearing witness to and recording their existence to political ends.