(Re)Interrogating Camp and Refugees in Forced Migration Studies

Agamben points out that the camp situation reduces them to naked life, “absolute bio-political space…in which power confronts nothing other than pure biological life without any mediation,” yet refugees as residents of camps can reinterpret their existence in camps as politicised space. Most refugees located in North and South live separately from what is presumed to be normal and mainstream and their location beyond the city limits is an indication of their marginalisation and scant access to resources. Camp space becomes the paradigmatic of stratification on one hand, and diversification of membership prevalent in contemporary society. My paper will analyse the space within the domain of forced migration studies and suggest that like the refugees, camps too have become tools of society when it should have been rather a place of exception. The paper will engage theoretically with camps as loci within forced migration studies and critically addresses the following: a) the refugee-subject relation in developed and developing world, b) the interrelation between refugee subject and camp, and the usefulness of camp as an analytical tool to understand forced migration study.