Post-Camp Condition: Sub-Saharan Male Migrants Maintaining a Constellation of Refuge-Zones

ABSTRACT

Within migration studies, camp conditions have been extensively investigated, yet scholars have relatively overlooked the vital role that post-camp conditions play in migrants’ journeys. Drawing from extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Europe, 20 biographical interviews and informal conversations with Sub-Saharan male migrants, this article explores the immobility of a population made hyper-mobile within Europe and investigates how migrants navigate their housing precarity and maintain spaces of autonomy. I demonstrate that refuge-zones are a direct consequence of restrictive migration policies, serving as physical locations for claiming the right to sedentariness and a practical solution to live with dignity. Marooned migrants, while fending for themselves, maintain (self)caring projects sustained by moral communities which create an audible sociability and a form of permanence, albeit fragile. I argue that refuge-zones, beyond providing shelter, enable migrants to endure their frustration while fostering hope for a better future.

KEYWORDS:

• Autonomy
• im/mobility
• camp
• shelter
• squat

Introduction

On a rainy afternoon in a Swiss squat, the chairman, Chidike, finished collecting weekly dues and announced the agenda. The meeting turned serious when four individuals sought permission to return to the house after being fined and banned two months earlier. These individuals had encountered a police patrol after a night of boozing, rushing to the house to evade inspection. The police had followed but camped outside, as they needed a warrant to enter due to the squat being technically private property. A resident called me to urgently come. Upon my arrival, I found three police cars and fifteen officers. After identifying myself as a resident and undergoing an identity check, I was allowed inside. Inside was chaotic, with everyone hurriedly packing and anxiously shouting. Our only negotiating power was that the police did not know how many people were inside, which determined the required reinforcements. So we waited, peeking through windows, trying to anticipate their actions. Fortunately, after a few tense hours, the police left without explanation. Relief was short-lived, as an urgent meeting was called and it was unanimously decided to punish the four individuals who brought the police. They were banned from the house for two months and fined 250CHF each. Two months later, the accused individuals returned. Some appeared exhausted because they had failed to secure a room, forcing them back to emergency shelters. Chidike began his sermon by discussing strategies of staggered mobility in public spaces, reminding everyone of the facts and admonishing the disgrace of bringing attention to the house as an act of individual selfishness: ‘I hope the penalty you faced has shown you the way. Your mistake shed light on this house, and we all faced the consequences’ (Author's fieldnotes, 2019).

Migrants all over Europe, facing restricted access to formal housing markets, often end up in emergency shelters, makeshift shantytowns, squats, or on the streets, where uncertainty and evictions are the norm rather than the exception. Official censuses are unreliable due to periodic dismantling by authorities, followed by swift reconstruction elsewhere. Flourishing discreetly, some have transitioned from temporary settlements to more enduring slums, accommodating thousands of people on the move (Agier 2019). In this context, autonomous life is not a given but has to be actively created and migrants strive to find a safe place to remain away from the state's grips. Within migration studies, camp conditions have been extensively investigated (Katz 2017; Malkki 1996; Ramadan 2013). Yet, limited attention has been paid to the crucial role post-camp conditions play in migrants’ journeys. While notable exceptions have explored the (hyper)mobility of migrants, constrained by a combination of socio-economic factors and administrative predicaments (Fontanari 2017; Picozza 2017; Schapendonk 2018; Wyss 2019), there remains a lack of focus on how such mobility is sustained by the creation and maintenance of spaces of autonomy (Belloni 2016; Cremaschi 2020; Scott-Smith 2022). The purpose of this article is to scrutinise the immobility of a population made hyper-mobile within Europe and explore the ways migrants navigate their housing precarity. I argue that migrants find means to create spaces of autonomy where they negotiate their abandonment by state support, enabling them to remain immobile and live with dignity against all odds.

Drawing from extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Europe, 20 biographical interviews and informal conversations with Sub-Saharan male migrants, I investigate how these individuals adapt to housing precarity and maintain spaces of autonomy. The paper begins with an overview of my theoretical framework, which combines elements of migration studies, political sociology of occupation movements, and Scott’s concept of refuge-zone. Subsequently, I provide a brief introduction to the data produced, serving as the foundation for the article, and proceed with analytical sections that delve into the migrants’ subjective interpretation of their housing precarity.

This paper examines how a destitute population produces and reproduces refuge-zones (Scott 2009). It demonstrates that refuge-zones are a direct consequence of restrictive migration policies, serving as a physical location to claim a right to sedentariness and a practical solution to live with dignity. I suggest that marooned migrants, while fending for themselves, maintain (self)caring projects sustained by moral communities which create an audible sociability and a form of permanence, albeit fragile. I argue that refuge-zones, beyond providing shelter, enable migrants to endure their frustration while fostering hope for a better future.

Hypermobility, Housing Precarity and Refuge-Zones

Instead of creating a European Fortress that can block migration completely, different studies have shown that restrictive policies have produced shifts in migratory routes, often making them longer and more perilous (Anderson 2014; De León 2015). Due to limited access to the labour market and support services, some migrants engage in onward mobility within Europe to secure their basic needs and join the ranks of a disposable, mobile, and cheap labour force (Fontanari 2016). Lengthy bureaucratic processes, alongside their precarious legal status, push them into hypermobility (Picozza 2017, Tazzioli 2020), characterised by short-term movements, constant circulation, and ultimately unstable settlement (Fontanari 2016, Wyss 2019). However, mobility always relies on material and social moorings, such as infrastructures (Scott-Smith 2022) or local social networks (Schapendonk 2018). Sedentariness and movement are inherently interdependent; anchoring in a local context is necessary to sustain (hyper)mobility: the movement of one depends on the immobility of the other. In this paper, I focus on the differential access to sedentariness and how migrants manage to create and maintain spaces of autonomy.

Anthropological research has primarily explored the subjectivities of displaced individuals within official camp settings, revealing the arbitrary and reductionist impacts of humanitarian governance (Malkki 1996). The condition of spatial confinement, strandedness, and constant turnover exacerbates uncertainty and makes political organisation within the migrant population challenging, though not impossible. Recent ethnographies have criticised the conceptualisation of camps as merely spaces of exception and expressions of pure bare life, as proposed by Agamben (1998). Instead, these scholars consider camps as considerably more ambivalent, oscillating between care and control (Katz 2017), imbued with contrasting emotions such as fear and hope, suspicion and solidarity (Brankamp 2021), simultaneously including and excluding the camp residents (Oesch 2017; Sigona 2015), and providing the fertile ground for contentious politics among dispersed individuals (Ramadan 2013).

What happens after the camp? Where does one turn when access to the formal and decent housing market is out of reach? There are essentially five options: turning to social services, renting a room in the formal housing market, asking for aid from domiciled relatives, sleeping rough, or clustering. A brief description of these five options is necessary to clarify the scope of possibilities left to a destitute population. Firstly, social housing is usually characterised by an extensive waiting list within a bureaucratic labyrinth and is conditioned by a range of eligibility requirements, making it available primarily to legalised citizens (Dotsey and Chiodelli 2021). Migrants who are excluded from this housing solution are routinely referred to reception centres or emergency shelters, often located in remote areas, where residents’ movements are restricted and monitored (Fontanari 2017). Secondly, access to the formal housing market is inherently problematic for individuals with unstable working conditions and uncertain income. As a result, most migrants turn to sleep-sellers, also known as slumlords, who attempt to maximise profits from their properties by exploiting vulnerable tenants. Indeed, a sleep-seller's overcrowded rooms with disproportionately high rents constitute the primary means of accessing affordable shelter, even at the cost of limited privacy, poor housing quality, and few rights associated with regular contracted tenancy (Dotsey and Chiodelli 2021; van Baar 2017). The third alternative, seeking assistance from relatives, when available, often falls short due to resource limitations on the part of the domiciled individual and the potential shame experienced by those seeking help, as they might perceive themselves as burdens, leading to potential moral and financial debt (Menjívar 2000). Moreover, all three solutions are conditioned by a vertical guest/host relationship and entail a potential cost to one's dignity (Cremaschi 2020): forced intimacy with roommates, the requirement to comply with rules and schedules, and dependence on hosts. Fourthly, sleeping rough or experiencing homelessness exposes individuals to extreme weather conditions, leading to health risks, police harassment, and psychological strain.

Ultimately, migrants need to fend for themselves and cluster to create spaces of autonomy, often referred to as ‘free space,’ ‘sanctuary,’ or ‘safe space’. These various labels encompass a physical location for marginalised individuals, facilitating organisational planning and advocacy work (Polletta 1999) while also providing a material manifestation of an idealised future (Grohmann 2019). In this paper, I refer to these spaces of autonomy by adapting Scott's concept of refuge-zones (2009). Scott analyses Southeast Asia’s mountains as a refuge-zone, a deliberate flight to create an area of escape from the plains, progressively colonised by an extensive state apparatus. While Scott focuses on refuge-zones that emerge in isolated areas or borderlands, keeping the state apparatus at a distance through physical remoteness, I propose directing attention to the margins of the urban and rural landscape. It is in these interstices that a destitute and marooned population manages to conquer spaces of autonomy.

To ‘fill the gap’ (Mayblin and James 2019) between a shortage of state support and housing needs, one available repertoire of collective action is the occupation of vacant infrastructures. Broadly defined, an occupation represents a physical collective presence in a place to claim its future use. Within political sociology, occupation processes are mainly analysed through urban squatting movements (Cattaneo and Martínez 2014; Péchu 2010; Pruijt 2013). Authors distinguish between two typologies of squats: deprivation-based and so-called political squats. The former is supposed to be shaped by the absolute necessity of roofless individuals and represents a desperate opportunistic strategy without any political claims. The latter serves as a means to create alternative social laboratories challenging private property, neoliberal speculation, and the commodification of urban commons. Numerous European case studies explore how migrants engage in occupation movements, using squats for transit, residence, and political advocacy, blending direct actions and political revendications (Mudu and Chattopadhyay 2018). To effectively negotiate the use of vacant infrastructures, migrants in precarious legal positions often rely on local intermediaries, their expertise in occupation processes, and their networks to articulate and disseminate their claims. The relationships between migrants and local activists are complex and ambivalent. Despite operating on principles of equality, horizontal organisation, and self-management, collective occupations still experience internal conflicts and might reproduce power dynamics. For example, in Madrid, Martínez's study (2016) suggests that the sustainability of squats depends on the convergence of local activists’ and migrants’ agendas. In contrast, Belloni's work (2016) in Rome highlights potential clashes between local activists and migrants regarding the moral basis of squatting. While the former may base their activity on abstract anti-capitalist ideals, the latter may emphasise pragmatic and daily concerns, such as saving money to remit.

Enhancing this literature trend, this paper apprehends occupation processes through the lens of a refuge-zone: a ‘state effect’ (Scott 2009, 24), which embodies both a reactive strategy to escape the state’s grips and a physical space where the creation of a necessary alternative present becomes not only imaginable but realisable. Linking deprivation-based and prefigurative politics, I demonstrate that a refuge-zone illustrates disjoint yet parallel actions of individual everyday strategies and collective resistance. It not only represents a ‘shatter zone’ (ibid, 7) – a place of flight and marronnage – but also a struggle to secure a share, the requisition of what is essential to live with dignity, thereby alleviating the frustrations of one’s current existence.

Methodological Approach

Extensive fieldwork conducted between 2018 and 2023, including 20 biographical interviews and numerous informal conversations with Sub-Saharan male migrants, informs this study. It explores housing precarity, bridging subjective experiences with structural inequalities. My analysis is primarily exemplified through two field sites: Isinmi, a Swiss squatting collective, and Riposo, an Italian makeshift slum, both framed by my interlocutors through the metaphor of a ‘ghetto’. The term ‘ghetto’ was used by my interlocutors to describe a self-managed settlement where destitute individuals seek refuge and may hide. It's important to note that this definition is distinct from the historical context of Jewish Ghettos or the colonial policy in the apartheid state of South Africa. Nevertheless, similar to Agier’s study (2019), the way my interlocutors used the term ‘ghetto’ also implies segregation, material deprivation, but, most significantly, a space of autonomy (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Emma’s birthday celebration.

Due to destitute migrants’ mistrust of institutional inquiries, the initial phase of my fieldwork relied on my personal network in Switzerland: a squatting collective anonymously called Isinmi, which occupied vacant infrastructures to accommodate precariously housed migrants. In 2015, individuals witnessing people sleeping outside emergency shelters took swift independent action. They acted as local intermediaries (Ambrosini 2017), providing accommodation in existing squats to those without roofs. As the demand grew, new infrastructures were occupied exclusively to house migrants. This included the occupation of a vacant storage warehouse, which unofficially provided sanctuary for over 200 migrants. This main association was referred to by my interlocutors as the ‘Big Ghetto’, suggesting the presence of smaller ‘ghettos’. Indeed, serving as a highly visible umbrella organisation, this occupation movement gave rise to numerous smaller and less conspicuous squats, including the one I was involved with. Part of a broader social movement, Isinmi emerged in mid-2018. Reflecting a similar repertoire of actions to various occupation movements across Europe (Mudu and Chattopadhyay 2018), Isinmi operated under a horizontal organisational structure: migrants oversaw the day-to-day activities of the squat through weekly meetings, with local activists playing a role in identifying, occupying, and negotiating the use of abandoned infrastructures. I have been part of Isinmi since its initial stage, acting as a local intermediary, connecting migrants with housing opportunities, particularly by facilitating the requisition of vacant infrastructures. While I never lived in the squat, my involvement in Isinmi gave me access to the inhabitants’ daily life, allowing me to closely observe and engage with their experiences and challenges.

Conditions inside the squats I observed varied considerably, including the number of residents, ranging from 15 to 50, the duration of their stay, as well as the size and hygiene of the successive squats. The different Isinmi residences were mostly situated on the outskirts of a medium-sized town in French-speaking Switzerland. Some were dilapidated houses with mold issues and lacked direct water access, while others were comfortable buildings with functioning facilities in every apartment. Independent of the architecture of the different occupied infrastructures, a common parlor was systematically installed at the ground level where casual activities and weekly meetings took place. Meeting gatherings were significantly important to organise future occupation endeavours, resolving minor conflicts of shared living arrangements (cleaning schedule, music playing and noise levels, waste disposal) but most importantly to establish a share set of moral values which guide every member, as I explore in the following sections. Drawing inspiration from previous experiences in refuge-zones or political organisations, these practical rules were established and refined during the weekly meetings by the migrants themselves. Local intermediaries were explicitly instructed not to intervene in the formulation or implementation of these rules. Therefore, even though I might not have personally agreed with the legitimacy of certain rules, I had no influence in the decision-making process.

The inhabitants remained fairly stable and constituted of Sub-Saharan men aged between 18 and 55 years old. The backgrounds, journeys, experiences, and administrative statuses of my interlocutors displayed significant diversity: some were pending or rejected asylum seekers, others were Dubliners on onward movement (Picozza 2017) but also individuals with permanent European residency. My encounters with migrants were shaped by research design and locations visited, not preconceived notions. Administrative categories and trajectories of my interlocutors differed, but a common residential experience emerged: extended stay in camps, interspersed with recurrent episodes of homelessness, as well as periods spent in rooms rented from sleep-sellers, and different refuge-zones.

In a second phase, I visited my interlocutors to various locations across Europe. Inspired by Schapendonk (2018) trajectory ethnography, these follow-up visits were supplemented by online communication, allowing me to gain insights into the evolution and bifurcations of my interlocutors’ trajectories. In the following sections, I mainly contrast Isinmi with Riposo, a refuge-zone different in scale but similar in its function, that I visited twice, once in summer 2021 and then again in autumn 2022. Situated in Southern Italy, in a region famously known as the Italian breadbasket, Riposo was a shantytown established on a disused military base adjacent to an official migrant reception centre. Torn fences separated these two areas, but the numerous holes in them indicated the permeability of these barriers. Over the years, a makeshift city has developed here, featuring grocery and electronics stores, churches and mosques, various restaurants, multiple bars, and even nightclubs. Initially, the first residents used intermodal containers as permanent shelters, but gradually, the architectural landscape of the place evolved to include concrete and brick constructions. However, some of the less fortunate residents built wooden houses, which, unfortunately, were prone to recurrent fires. The landing strips of the abandoned military base served as the main asphalted roads, where cars were primarily parked or used for transportation within the slum. Electricity was sourced from a power plant and distributed through loosely suspended overhead cables connecting different neighbourhoods. Drinkable water was available in large tanks provided by a local organisation. Shantytowns in the agricultural lands of Southern Europe are often examined as a reservoir of cheap and exploitable labour force (Dines and Rigo 2015). However, the housing dimension of precarity is sometimes overlooked (Dotsey and Chiodelli 2021), a point that this paper aims to address.

The diverse housing situations served as my primary vantage points for observing and engaging in the daily lives of my interlocutors. In summary, while the physical mobility of my interlocutors was virtually ‘tracked’ through social media, and their trajectories and aspirations ‘traced’ through brief visits, I pay particular attention to conceptually and empirically ‘follow’ the metaphor of the ‘ghetto’. Isinmi and Riposo differ significantly in their material conditions, physical locations, historical emergence and organisation. However, as Katz (2023) suggests, it is also plausible to analyse such self-managed spaces as distinct yet comparable process with interrelated and overlapping realities.

The field notes and interviews were transcribed and coded using an inductive approach inspired by constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz 2008). Alongside this continuous iterative process, I follow a triangulation strategy to check the consistency of interpretations that emerged from the field.

Fragile Refuge-Zones

By examining migrants’ housing precarity, the following sections emphasise interconnected dynamics: the establishment of self-help networks enabling migrants to invest in meaningful activities; the formation of moral communities sustaining refuge-zones’ discretion and individuals’ self-worth; the opportunity for gathering and celebrating with experiential peers, and the fragile yet relieving permanence of refuge-zones (Section 3.4).

(Self)Caring

All of my interlocutors have passed through European asylum procedures and their respective camp situations structure their experience of exile. Regardless of the advancement of their asylum procedure, my interlocutors recalled being indirectly or explicitly pushed out of their camp. The calculated inaction and indifference of the state translates into a form of organised abandonment (Davies et al. 2017) which transforms a longing for paradise into a violent haven. Escaping their camp and thriving in a refuge-zone is a practical solution to overcome state abandonment through a self-care project which grants fugitive migrants with the possibility to hide with dignity, bear frustration and regenerate hope for a better future.

John Jack, a computer science graduate and former Biafra movement digital campaign manager, sought asylum in Italy in 2017, but his claim was eventually rejected after two years. With no other options in sight, he turned to Riposo as his best alternative to find both shelter and informal job: ‘You come to understand that you are on your own, you have to take care of yourself, survive by any means necessary. It's the survival of the fittest’. During our interview, John Jack extensively described how Riposo was an insecure place marked by a notable absence of solidarity and social cohesion. However, John Jack also tempered his Darwinian perspective, emphasising that, despite inherent social tensions, destitute migrants manage to live together and cooperate effectively through informal social support, stating: ‘Here we live in groups because in the ghetto, anything can happen. So we watch each other’s back, like a family, people that you can trust’. The harsh conditions in Riposo made it essential for residents to form close-knit groups, which John Jack linked to families.

In Isinmi, one of the most recurrent metaphors I heard was that the squat was inhabited by ‘one family’. This emic term described how and why individuals were united in a collective accommodation. Indeed, as its name indicates, ‘one family’ was a set of moral practices which created and activated an ethos of mutual obligation and reciprocity. At several occasions, money was collected on a voluntary basis during weekly meeting to financially support those who were stranded in Italy, Spain or Greece because their asylum process took longer than expected. Because Slim Eddy, a passionate believer who shared his faith with enthusiasm, was bedridden and unable to earn a living following his appendicitis, he was excused from paying the weekly dues for several months. Those who remotely grieved the death of close family members were also exempted. Rotary tontines, voluntary system of group savings, were widely distributed. On a different scale than Isinmi, Riposo was inhabited by numerous ‘one family’. However, as Cremaschi (2020) demonstrates in his study of different southern Italian shantytowns such solidarity practices are partial and intermittent, occurring primarily among small groups with homogeneous characteristic, such as ethnicity and gender, and tend to be of short duration. Nevertheless, despite these shortcomings, these various examples reveal how Isinmi and Riposo generated hope. They enabled individuals who lacked access to stable income to think about the future and not just their immediate survival. In order to fulfill a project and to re-create a form of ‘normality’ in a short-term future, individuals first have to make the everyday present inhabitable (Das and Kleinman 2001). Similar to Belloni’s (2016) case study, Isinmi and Riposo affordability were morally oriented toward the future: being able to work on a personal social mobility and a transnational familial obligation as a breadwinner. As Kinsley, a sophisticated 42-years-old man with an impeccable style, suggested: ‘Yes, Isinmi gives us hope. Some people, it is like if they have achieved anything in Africa, or they are taking care of their family, it is because of Isinmi’. Cheaper than any accommodation within European housing market, Isinmi allowed individuals to save money for meaningful purpose, such as trying to make family’s members thrive while coping with their own current reality. Beyond economic considerations, a refuge-zone enables its inhabitants to overcome social isolation and state abandonment through what Belloni (ibid.) terms welfare from below: a grassroots social support that provides not only material but also emotional assistance – as the following example illustrates.

In 2022, George returned for a few months to Milan in order to renew his five-year residency permit, or at least ‘work on it’. During my visit, we spent most of our time nearby the main train station where different groups of people used to gather together in what George called an ‘open-air ghetto’. Clustered by different ethnic groups, we stayed with the predominantly Sub-Saharan men who either spent time socialising or taking a break from their food delivery duties. Two women served African food, cigarettes could be bought individually, cheap beers were available. I later asked him why he liked to spend time there.

I love Milano Centrale because a person like me always stay alone, I don’t have much friends … but when I want to chill with people, I go to Centrale to see different people, black or white, just to sit there, chill and chat. People are speaking your language so you tell to yourself ‘Ok I am not too far away from home’ it makes you a little bit happy. You go there to share love, maybe some people need my help. Also you can eat Igbo, share with people, give people courage and hope you know, motivate them so they won’t give up easily. When you go home, you tell yourself ‘Ok today I made a great job’ because some people are ready to give up. George, formal interview, July 2022, Italy

Looking for a familiar environment, sharing food and emotional support, caring for others in a similar situation is a way to produce welfare from below: a self-recovery process through the care work to others. This welfare from below eases the feeling of estrangement with strong ties, while generating hope for a better future. However, to (re)produce this form of informal social support, a refuge-zone requires to collectively constitute a moral community.

Moral Communities

Refuge-zones are structured through moral communities with shared values and rules. While the degree of homogeneity within these moral communities can vary, practical rules are enforced to maintain the discretion and existence of refuge-zones. In the case of Isinmi, a share set of moral values guided every member, as outlined in ‘the constitution of the house’. Sets of practical rules were deemed non-negotiable, with specific penalties in the event of a violation. The ‘constitution of the house’ was displayed on a board in the parlour, invariably stating a financial penalty and/or a spatial ban for breaches. For instance, selling drugs near the occupied infrastructure resulted in a permanent ban; physical altercations with a roommate were punished with a one-month ban and a 250 CHF fine; bringing unapproved guests was sanctioned with two weeks ban and a 250 CHF fine; interrupting others during weekly meeting carried a penalty of 5 CHF. As repeated ad nauseam by the successive chairmen, penalties were intentionally harsh to serve as a deterrent and as a reminder of the misery of being homeless. The reminder was thought to enhance membership appreciation.

Entry policy and access to Isinmi were possible through the recommendation of inhabitants but turnover was low. New member applications were collectively deliberated during weekly meetings and acceptance depended on current numbers, but most importantly, on a judgement whether the applicant's reputation suggested compliance with the ‘constitution of the house’. Every time a new member joined Isinmi, the ‘constitution of the house’ was ceremonially read out loud before the new member ritually accepted to comply with it. As the chairman underlined it in the introductory vignette, this moral contract asserted that the well-being of ‘the house’ was greater than individual goals. As Grohmann (2019) suggests, occupation processes are linked to the creation of an ethical subject: producing the material conditions of autonomy enables the potential emergence of an ethical subject.

At a different scale, Riposo inhabitants also established formal rules. According to Felix, a rough but jovial Sub-Saharan man of 34 who served as my gatekeeper in Riposo, a committee was elected. This committee included representatives of different nationalities, and their role was to sort out conflicts and impose sanctions. Spatial bans and monetary fines were also commonly practiced. Due to its size, Riposo was obviously organised differently and notably through the delegation of rules into concrete objects. A few hours after my arrival in Riposo, I confided to my hosts that I was quite surprise to see so many speed bumps. Felix explained that ‘They are their own government. They have to manage the area and they know that people drives like crazy animals. Here it’s not a zoo so they construct their own bubbles to force people to drive slowly’. Felix pointed out that Riposo residents delegated their normative values into a permanent material object. ‘Here is not a zoo’ became Felix’s running gag to underline how Riposo was ordered through a moral community, how speed bumps enforced a pace of mobility and thus represented an outsourced injunction to behave properly.

Like Riposo’s speed bumps, Isinmi’s ‘constitution of the house’ was a mutually accepted framework, a set of normative and prescriptive moral values which moved from one squat to another. In addition to explicit rules, two main tacit principles overlapped over the time, what one can called activism seniority and meritocracy. The ages of squat members varied from 18 up to 55, but biological ages were mostly overridden by a form of activism seniority – determined by when one entered the squat – and meritocracy – dependent on accomplishments during previous occupations. People who actively found empty infrastructure or took legal risks by taking part in an occupation were credited as morally worthy activists while ones who did not were labelled as lazy profiteers. This meritocracy, in parallel with the selective process of the entrance, based on the applicant’s reputation, recalls the image of deservingness in asylum systems which depicts asylum seekers as welfare scroungers (Burnett 2015). Based on visible achievements during occupation, the meritocratic system established a deservingness hierarchy which rendered biological seniority irrelevant. Sentences like ‘Nobody senior me here’ and ‘This ain’t your father’s house’ were frequently repeated during weekly meetings. The former, factually wrong, highlighted that biological seniority was made obsolete and replaced by activism seniority. The latter refered to the fact that the occupied infrastructure was supposed to be shared equally and that no one should claim authority on it. However, activism seniority and meritocracy translated into a difference degree of authority in collective decision making but mostly during the distribution of newly acquired spaces. One day in 2021 before a weekly meeting, residents volunteered – or not – to participate in an upcoming occupation. Enzo, a youngster newly arrived in Switzerland, took me aside to solicit advice as he never participated in previous occupations: ‘My guys are not ready to take any risk; even if they are fresh in Switzerland with no record. But if none Isha come, we are not legit’ anymore … If I come to bust the new house, I am gonna chose with who I want to live no? With people who bring me peace?’. To the extent of my knowledge, I agreed with the last part of his question. As Enzo also emphasised, sharing a common ethnic origin was framed as the securest way to get along with roommates. On the one hand, existing on the fringes of society is facilitated by a form of welfare from below and sustained by a moral community. On the other hand, one’s ability to patiently navigate, persist and persevere in such conditions reflects a personal sense of self-worth (Cremaschi 2020), both in Isinmi and Riposo.

After a maximum one-minute ride through Riposo’s multiple speed bumps, we eventually stopped in front of a bar where we met our host and some friends of him. The subdued atmosphere and the over-loud afro-beat music made it difficult to have a collective chat but enhanced private one-to-one discussion. While I was sipping a drop of beer, Felix turned to me out of the blue and told me: ‘Welcome to Ghetto-life. Now you see how immigrants are patient. This is our situation in Europe, we have to carry on with it. But you, Louis, you wouldn’t have the mind to bear this kind of life. Going to toilet in the bushes, staying in the dust’. While admitting that I was quite used to my material comfort, I came to realise that enduring a ‘Ghetto-life’, marked by deprivation and frustration, was a testament to one’s stubborn persistence. Through patience, migrants find self-worth as they construct a positive image of themselves through their capacity to adapt in a hostile environment and survive in a sometimes adverse refuge-zone.

Audible Sociability

A camp was retrospectively experienced by my interlocutors through their lack of autonomy: feeling trapped and confined, infantilised in their everyday life shaped by paternalist interaction, and forced to be idle endangering their masculinity as ascribed breadwinner. Peter, a thirty-year-old, taciturn Sub-Saharan man that I met near Napoli, described his Italian camp straight through the monotonous cafeteria routine of waiting in line for cold pasta almost every day. This pasta diet represented the lack of variety and became a recurring theme for my interlocutors, symbolising an endless and meaningless repetition, devoid of any glimpse of hope. The imposed meal, with its literal and symbolic coldness, amplified Peter's sense of deprivation. As a means of capturing this sentiment, Peter often joked that when asked if everything was alright (in Italian, ‘Tutto apposto’), he used to respond with ‘Tutto a pasta’ (everything is pasta), indicating his lack of autonomy and the hollowness of his daily existence which was bland repetition at the cost of his dignity. Such experiences were not confined to camps; rather, my interlocutors consistently faced them throughout their journeys, as Issa explained to me.

During my visit to Malta, Issa rented a private room in a shared apartment with five roommates. I mostly spent time in the apartment's common area and encountered the landlord at his ground-level bar, which led to issues as he accused me of not paying for my stay in Issa's room. After a tense exchange and presenting my Airbnb receipt, we returned to the apartment where Issa angrily declared ‘You see the kind of shit I am forced to pass through? This is another kind of colonisation. It’s like refugee camp. Telling me how to stand, how to sleep … Normally a landlord doesn’t come like this just to give you order ‘Don’t put your feet on the couch blablabla’. They try to control my life, to cage me the way they want. Man I am crying for the ghetto … ’. For Issa, the lack of autonomy he experienced in his camp was put in parallel with his sleep-seller’s despotic meddling. Colonisation here referred to the violation of his personal territory, the intrusion in his intimate life which ultimately narrows his space of autonomy. An autonomy that he once found in a refuge-zone, which was in strong contrast with the dependency on an external superior, might it be sleep-sellers or camp’ employees.

Destiny, a Sub-Saharan gentle giant, echoed similar dependency experiences and contrasted it to Isinmi: ‘It is true that sometimes some violence happens but most of the time we enjoy to stay together, be happy, catch some fun, discuss and smile’. Destiny did not reside in Isinmi but rented a shared room from a sleep-seller. To be part of the association, he paid weekly dues, despite preferring to sleep elsewhere to avoid conflicts. Overcrowding and constant stress led to occasional animosity among Isinmi members, with rare incidents of physical violence, like Destiny being stabbed with a broken bottle. Destiny perceived these episodic acts of violence as less significant compared to the constant threat of police surveillance outside. Self-removal to refuge-zones allows for discreet sociability away from state scrutiny, maintaining a sense of stability and inclusion, albeit precarious. A refuge-zone has the potential to give access to meaningful places that are sorely lacking within a hostile environment. Seemingly insignificant activities, such as encountering new people, sharing home-made foods and practicing freely sports are of particular importance for those who feel excluded from daily mundane life and indeed segregated to particular places.

Echoing concerns of dependency, many of my interlocutors drew parallels between the practical routines of camps and sleep-sellers’ rooms. Indeed, tenants have to comply with sleep-sellers’ rules, bathing and cooking are usually scheduled because of inherent overcrowding and tenants are encouraged to remain discreet to avoid drawing attention to the illegality of this rental arrangement. As Johny, a trained barber and Isinmi’s former secretary, put it: ‘If you live in a private house you can’t play music, you cannot talk, you stay alone and anything you do, you do it quietly. No noise. Because if you disturb the people in the building they can call cops. But in Isinmi we do anything we want. We are living normal life’. A refuge-zone produces the mere possibility to make noise, to gather with peers without fearing consequences, to listen and dance on music with light euphoria, to enjoy drunkenness with recklessness, to experience a sense of normality without being muted by the injunction of discretion due to the risk of eviction from landlord and deportation from police. Bayat (2010, 138) argues that ‘fun is a metaphor for the expression of individuality, spontaneity, and lightness, in which joy is the central element’. Since public places seem not to be so public, but a citizen’s privilege, destitute migrants turn to refuge-zone where they can discreetly meet peers and socialise without risking any form of state encounters.

Emma, a nonchalant man with a deadpan sense of humour, posted this picture on Facebook for his 32nd anniversary (Figure 1): ‘I beg, the cake is all ready. You can come have yours’. This picture depicted an assortment of alcohol and soft drinks, an appealing African stew, a variety of snacks and a loudspeaker to play music. But the real centrepiece was the birthday cake sitting atop a plate in the colours of the Swiss flag, ornamented with the country's name in its three national languages. In a daily life where opportunities to celebrate are scarce, and few activities are available, a refuge-zone provides Emma the possibility to celebrate his birthday, become a host, indulge in his favourite foods, virtually invite his friends to physically join in the festivities and have fun together. Moreover, by sharing this picture on social media, Emma could demonstrate personal progress to his transnational network: a tangible proof of his advancement since departing from home. Unlike the infantilisation and dependency that often accompanied living in a camp, he could express his selfhood, present himself as an independent adult, reclaiming his autonomy and self-determination. A refuge-zone provides a glimmer of hope for a better life in the future, while simultaneously granting Emma the autonomy to withstand the precariousness of his current situation. Having fun with peers is a way to temporarily break free from one’s difficult present and hence claim a part of self-determination. Having fun serves as a means of proclaiming one’s existence in a direct, physical, and material manner. Through this seemingly ordinary act, Destiny, Emma and many others were able to loudly assert their right to dignity and hence challenge their illegalisation, which tends to render them invisible and silent.

(Im)Permanence

Fugitive migrants maintain a constellation of refuge-zones, which represent fragile but necessary nodal points and provide a degree of stability within enduring uncertainty. On a late afternoon in August, Felix welcomed me at the train station, before we took an informal taxi to Riposo. After a 20 min ride, we finally reached a dusty trail where everyone closed their windows to reduce dust inside the car. While the driver managed to dodge the multiple potholes, Felix told me ‘We are now leaving Europe, welcome to another world’. Like the Calais jungle or others makeshift slums, it is tempting to see Riposo or Isinmi as spaces of isolation and enclosure (Scott-Smith 2022). The vibrant density of Riposo sharply contrasted with the desolation of the direct surrounding, made of deserted land as far as one can see. This feeling of barren and neglected land was reinforced with an abundance of rusty car wrecks, the stench of burnt waste and barking stray dogs. The whole place left a tragic impression through neglect by the state and forgotten by time. When rain fell, the dusty trail connecting Riposo to the asphalt road turned impassable because the ground got muddy. As soon as the sun dried, Riposo was not isolated anymore but became a road in tomato supply chain production, toward asylum procedures and more generally to mobility within Europe.

Felix sought asylum in the Riposo camp in 2015. Despite waiting for over eight years, his asylum process has remained unresolved. In 2020, he left Switzerland to actively ‘work’ on his asylum procedure, hoping for a positive outcome. Due to the lengthy bureaucratic process, Felix has remained highly mobile. He rented a shared room near Napoli to store his valuable belongings but lived in Sicilia where he found a relatively stable electrician job and would return to Riposo when he needed to. When he stayed in Riposo, Felix was hosted by Obi, a friend he had met in Riposo camp, who had remained and built his own house. Obi, skilled in masonry, found abundant job prospects in Riposo. The mobility of Felix was hence facilitated by the immobile infrastructure that Obi patiently built. As he underlined: ‘A lot of friend come for their document, I want to host them properly. This is a family house, not a house to make money’. Despite material discomfort and (self)segregation, refuge-zones rely on and connect different social networks which facilitate migrants’ journey, enable decent immobility and over time produce and reproduce nodal points.

To work seasonal jobs or to comply with asylum procedures, migrants need to constantly circulate within Europe which pushes them to maintain a constellation of intermittent shelters. Although a refuge-zone may appear isolated from the city, it nevertheless represents a hub of social networks which ensures a form of existential stability through the existence of a physical anchor. In sharp contrast with the rigidity and short-term nature of a camp, a refuge-zone is not constrained by temporal limitation, and it embodies a form of fragile permanence.

A refuge-zones emerges as a direct consequence of restricted opportunities: a fixed but fragile point in an inherently unstable and uncertain environment. In concrete terms, a refuge-zone can reduce the unrelenting uncertainty of the constant risk of eviction due to the lack of formal contract (Baar 2017). In Scott's concept of refuge-zones (2009), individuals maintain physical distance from the state by residing in mountainous regions that are challenging to access. In my specific case study, the state is kept at a distance through its indifference and its capacity to turn a blind eye (Ambrosini 2017) but primarily through the very laws it has implemented. When the negotiation of an occupation succeeded, future inhabitants and landlords would usually sign a confidence contract that determined how vacant infrastructure was used. As the introductory vignette demonstrates, because of the confidence contract, the squatters were legally at home and the police therefore needed a warrant to enter the property. The value of Isinmi was therefore its collective and legitimate character: the involvement of local intermediaries, who did not fear deportation due to their citizenship, generated a concrete protection against police impunity and abrupt eviction.

In spring 2022, Isinmi members were summoned to once again vacate their residence. The next day, I visited the building to bid farewell and confirm it was indeed vacant. It was, but personal belongings were scattered about. Among these remnants, I noticed Paul's winter jacket which I had already spotted as fitting my personal taste. While I picked it up, wondering if I should keep it for myself, I realised that it revealed a different side of hypermobility: the need to store belongings or travel lightly. As de León (2015) demonstrates in his study of desert border crossings, migrants need disposable objects like a water bottle, dry food, sleeping bag and protective clothes to navigate through a place where resources are scarce. Reflecting power hierarchies, these indispensable but discardable objects echo the brutal violence of border enforcement (Scott-Smith 2022). For my interlocutors, travelling with a heavy bag pack was a clear sign that one was sleeping rough, representing both a shameful stigma but more importantly a sign of suspicion inviting police scrutiny. As Issa suggested when describing his circulation between different emergency shelters: ‘Everything was in my bag like a junkie’. The fragile permanence of a refuge-zone pushes Issa, Paul and many others to travel only with the bare minimum and therefore to constantly throw away the superfluous stuff accumulated in between evictions.

A refuge-zone reduces the risk of eviction but does not however fade entirely. Typically, one of the clauses in the confidence contract stipulated that the residents committed to leave the vacant infrastructure one-month prior any construction project would start. Squat residents then had only one month to find alternative solutions. Slim Eddy, who usually seemed quite optimist, underlined Isinmi’s impermanence: ‘You cannot call it a home, you can call it a resting place. It’s in the present, it’s only temporary’. The degree of mooring provided by a shelter is closely tied to its temporality. For example, an emergency shelter is intended to prevent hypothermia, while an asylum camp is design to be a temporary solution. Similarly, a squat's stability relies on negotiations with landlords and future construction projects, while a makeshift slum like Riposo is dependent on the tolerance of public authorities and the need for a flexible expendable labour force. However, despite their ephemeral dimension, these infrastructures are re-arranged, re-configured, re-appropriated, both symbolically and materially. They are not only tools to claim dignity but a physical space to actually live with dignity.

Conclusion: Reversible Frustration

Migrants navigate between acquaintances’ houses, public shelters, and makeshift slums to meet their basic needs and pursue opportunities. Previous studies aptly argue that this pattern of hypermobility enables migrants to grasp economic opportunities (Picozza 2017), but at the same time, it generates enduring precarity and prevents stable living conditions (Tazzioli 2020; Wyss 2019). (Hyper)mobility is not necessarily a voluntary choice but sometimes an undesirable consequence of repressive control mechanisms. This paper focuses on such post-camp conditions, the ways destitute migrants negotiate their housing precarity, fend for themselves, and conquer means to thrive by creating and maintaining a constellation of refuge-zones. Scott (2009) focuses on run-away mountainous populations that keep state apparatus at distance through physical remoteness, referred to as ‘the friction of terrain’ (ibid. 43). Adapting his concept of refuge-zones to migrants who flee repressive migration policies by hiding in the urban and rural margins, I have demonstrated that refuge-zones, such as Isinmi or Riposo, leverage state neglect to discretely blend in.

The housing precarity of fugitive migrants is not confined to locations called ‘ghettos’ by state authorities (Cremaschi 2020) but appears to be an enduring condition. Amidst the unpredictability of migrants’ journeys, refuge-zones offer a degree of stability because the state is kept at a distance through the very laws it has implemented, thereby providing concrete protection against police impunity and abrupt eviction. However, the formalised internal rules of Isinmi, found in the ‘constitution of the house’, and the embodiment of normative values in tangible objects within Riposo, such as speed bumps, served not only instrumental purposes but also cultivated moral communities. On one hand, maintaining discretion and averting external interventions is essential for preserving a refuge-zone. On the other hand, adapting to material deprivation and adhering to the moral communities’ rules demonstrates one's resilience and patience. Through this endurance, migrants transform their self-presentation: shifting from passive victims trapped in a prolonged limbo to active subjects asserting their right to dignity, even though they must patiently endure a frustrating existence in the meantime.

As demonstrated, Riposo and Isinmi, despite their contrasting scales, served similar functions. Behind their decrepitude and seemingly isolation, these refuge-zones represent crucial nodal points of immobile infrastructures which shape migrants’ journey (Scott-Smith 2022), fostering community bonds among weak ties and providing valuable social resources (Belloni 2016). While previous contributions often separate deprivation-based occupations and prefigurative politics (see, for instance, Mudu and Chattopadhyay 2018), I suggest that everyday resistance and collective dissent may mutually reinforce each other. By participating in seemingly ordinary acts of fun, migrants loudly assert their right to dignity, thereby negotiating their invisibilization, which tended to silence them. Despite different ethnicities, languages, and administrative statuses, Isinmi and Riposo embraced individuals who passed through identical experiences and faced similar obstacles, creating a sense of belonging through a shared experience of precarity. Through a refuge-zone, an individual's situation may transform into a collective form of belonging: from a fugitive existence to a moral community of sufferings and, ultimately, common resistance.

Rather than a bare life stripped of any agency (Agamben 1998), a refuge-zone eases daily frustration to endure a bearable life. In this process, migrants lower their expectations, realising that fragile permanence is their new normality, attainable only through precarious conditions in a refuge-zone – a process of subordination through frustration. However, a refuge-zone is a desirable shelter because it generates hope and demonstrates that frustration is not necessarily definitive but may be reversible. It produces dreams because its existence proves that alternative futures can be pursued, despite and beyond state apparatus.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

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Funding

This work was supported by Swiss National Science Foundation: [Grant Number P0FRP1_188025].