‘I finally found my place’: a political ethnography of the Maximiliaan refugee camp in Brussels

Abstract

In the face of an increasing influx of refugees in Europe and the inability of public authorities to respond in an adequate and timely way, an informal refugee camp was built in September 2015 in front of the Foreign Office in Brussels, Belgium. This article examines this camp, the Maximiliaan camp, as a contested space for citizenship. We analyse the acts of CollectActif, a collective consisting mostly of undocumented migrants, who set up a fixed kitchen and hence staged themselves as de facto citizens and as part and parcel of a broader citizens’ movement. Based on ethnographic research within this kitchen, we focus on several ‘polemical scenes’ in which a divisive police logic is confronted with a logic of universal equality. We conclude with a reflection on how presupposing radical equality has come to function as an important part of CollectActif’s activist citizenship.

Keywords:

• Activist citizenship
• migration
• political subjectification
• informality

Notes

1. We use the expression ‘asylum crisis’ here to refer to the general failure of the public system to manage the increased inflow of refugees. In the remainder of the text, we use the word ‘refugees’ to indicate all newcomers who arrived in Belgium during the summer of 2015, not only those who decided to apply for asylum. In some cases, when we refer to public institutions and the way they deal with this specific group, we stick to the (legal) category of ‘asylum seeker’.

2. By choosing ‘equality’ as a point of reference, we try to enrich the analysis of the acts of citizenship under study in this article. By interpreting citizenship practices through the concept of equality (against ‘a wrong’ [see Rancière 1999]) we opt for a radically subject-oriented view on politics as a place where equality (temporarily) occurs.

3. This focus group was carried out together with Dr. Thomas Swerts, who conducted an action-research on CollecActif’s process of political becoming.

4. This paragraph draws upon an argument I have developed together with a colleague of mine, Robin Vandevoordt. We will elaborate on this in a forthcoming article ‘Subversive humanitarianism: understanding the civil responses to Europe’s 2015 asylum crisis’ (temporary title).

5. Francken, Theo. 2015. Ik bied basic-preopvang aan. 14 gaan erop in. Ze willen gewoon nt. Tentenkampje te knus blijkbaar. Kritiek stopt hier. Excuses welkom. Dank. [Twitter]. 7 September. Available from https/twitter.com/FranckenTheo [Accessed 4 June 2017].

6. Before September 2015, asylum seekers from Baghdad were automatically granted subsidiary protection because of the unstable situation of the Iraqi capital. On 3 September 2015 the General Commissioner for refugees and stateless persons put the asylum applications from Baghdadi on hold because of the increased inflow of applicants. On 14 October 2015 the Commissioner General decided to stop granting the subsidiary protection status automatically because of certain improvements of the Iraqi capital’s safety situation. But, even before the independent investigation of the Commissioner General, the State Secretary of Asylum and Migration had already sent letters to all Baghdadi applicants stating that their file was put on hold because Baghdad was not considered to be unsafe (see http://www.kruispuntmi.be/nieuws/asielzoekers-uit-bagdad-krijgen-niet-meer-automatisch-subsidiaire-bescherming).

7. This quest for recognition was presented by my colleagues Thomas Swerts and Stijn Oosterlynck at the AAG 2017 Annual Meeting. We plan a publication on the topic of ‘Deservingness, citizenship and the quest for recognition of undocumented activists in Brussels’ (temporary title).