Overlapings between camp system and other relations of domination. A broader perspective on de-fencing

Gregor Samsa (2004)

This summer’s `Anti-Camp-Tour‘ want’s to examine new overlaps

Actually everything has been already clear in Cologne: The antiracist noborder-camp has reached its end. It has definitely failed to deal constructively with its internal borders and contradictions. Against this backround a new nationwide alliance has been formed - partly based on the former noborder-network. In this new alliance the following groups are involved: The Voice, several groups from the kein mensch ist illegal-network, Caravane, womenlesbian-networks, Brandenburg Refugee Initiative, JungdemokratInnen and several autonomous (antiracist) groups. At two preparation-meetings which were attented extraordinarily well it has been decided to launch a 12-days anti-lager-tour in the late summer of 2004.

The plan is to attend about 6-8 different (kind of) camps (lager) from West to East between the 22nd of august and the 5th of september. At three places it is planned to build up tents for about 2-4 days, at the other places only visits in passing by are planed. In any case it is planed to organize in each place de-fencing and other actions (in close cooperation with local preparation-structures). The common tour-‚‘journeyes‘ with buses and private cars will probably play an important role as well, especially because of residenzpflicht-controls which are quite likely to happen. Right at the moment the following places are under discussion as potentiale tour-places: Neuss, Bramsche/Osnabrück, Hannover, Halberstadt, Tramm/Mecklenburg Vorpommern, Berlin and Eisenhüttenstadt.
Even if it is generally talked about ‚lager‘, there is agreement that the (global) univesum of camps is very complex: Even in Germany one can differentiate 4 different kind of camps: Central Reception-Camps (ZASt), refugee homes, detention prisons and detention camps (Ausreisezentrum). Additionally there are prototypical ‚hybrid-camps‘ such as Bramsche/Osnabrück which is supposed to take in 550 people: in Bramsche it is tried to force even those refugees whose cases are still running with methodes which are actually belonging to the arsenal of repression of the new detention camps (Ausreisezentrum) into illegality or so called ‚voluntary returns‘.
From a control-technological perspective the german lager-system is undoubtly the most effective one within europe. On the one hand this has something to do with its close-meshed decentralisation, on the other hand with the fact that refugees in Germany have to stay for their whole asylum-proceedings principally in refugee homes. The other way around more and more camps have been opended also in the last years in other european countries such as England, Italy and the Netherlands. Apart from that it should be looked observantly at the expansion of the belt of camps alongside the new east- and south-east- borders of the enlarged EU: Already now there are 25 camps mainly financed by the EU which are all directly placed in the border-region of the new EU-joining countries. Some of the camps intern whole groups, for instance Afghan refugees in September 2001. Out of three reasons it is neccessary to observe those camps seriously: firstly there is almost no legal and other support-infrastructure available. One can‘t even think about fair asylum-proceedings. Instead it is more likely that there is a smooth transition from reception to deportation. Secondly refugees or migrants are threatened to be imprisoned as soon as they leave the camps for buying things or attending their laywers. Because the camps are placed in border regions which implies special rights for the border-polices: Without any court-decision refugees or migrants can be deported (returned) within 48 hours to the next (and the next and the next...) neighbouring country - with the reservation that the respective neighbouring country is accepted as so called ‚secure third state‘. With other words: The new border camps can be easily integrated in the machinery of ‚chains of deportations‘ which will take place by the EU-enlargment anyway. By the way: In order to stay in legal terms correctly the German Government is right at the moment speaking within the EU in favour of declaring the new neighbourhood of the EU as a circle of ‚secure third staates‘. This would comprise countries as White Russia - a country which is itself accused of violating human rights systematically and which does not have any legally guaranteed protection for refugees. Thirdly the border-camps could play a "function of catalyst” (Helmut Dietrich) in the realization of some of the plans which are right at the moment discussed within the EU and recently within the UNHCR as well: According to those plans refugees and migrants should in the future be put on the edges of the EU or even better: close to the regions of war and crisis (where all the refugees and migrants are originally coming from). one consequence would be that asylum could only be applied for in those camps which are located in the (globale) periphery. These plans are more than only sand-table exercises of biopolitical migration-bureaucrats. This is shown on the one hand by extra-territorial camps as they are run by the International Organisation of Migration (IOM); in these camps, for instance on the pacific island of Nauru, the IOM is imprisoning Afghan boat people refugees on behalf of the Australian Government. On the other hand one has to look at negotiations as the recently failed ones between England and Tanzania: According to this asylum-seekers from Somalia who were rejected in England should have been brought (deported) for payment into camps in Tanzania; the ‚rest‘ would then be left in the responsibility of Tanzanian authorities. Already last year a similar agreement between Swizerland and Senegal has been stopped in the last second by the parliament of Senegal.

In the meanwhile a fruitful debate has been developed within the preparation-alliance regarding the question from which conceptual point of view ‚lager‘ should be attacked. Some are proposing to describe camps especially as places of racist persecution: On the one hand refugees would be locally ‚fixed‘ and isolated from the rest of the population by the pure fact of being forced to live in camps at all. On the other hand the camp-internal regime of harassment would permanently produce experiences of degradation and humiliation. It would be aimed to break down resistance of refugees or to prevent it at all from the very beginning; apart from that, support from outside should be made as difficult as possible. Furthermore refugees could be more effectivly observed and controlled by distributing them well-balanced all over the country. In addition it could be prevented by this that refugees would mainly settle down in big cities (as they did it in England), where they also could profit by the support of (ethnic) community-networks. Against this backround the prominent role of the residenzpflicht within the ruling camp-system would also become more transparent: The Residenzpflicht is one of the most important instruments in order to make the refugees stay in the decentralized located camps. however, the superordinate function of the system of camps is it to keep the machinery of deportation running and running. Therfore the fights against camps and deportations would be the two sides of the same coin.
Basically this argument is not contradicted. Nevertheless a second - complementary - point of view has been brought up: According to this camps shouldn‘t be only scandalized as concrete physical locations. In the light of the present attacks against basic achievements of the so called welfare state it was necessary to operate with a widened understanding of camps as well. It was necessary to describe the ruling camp-regime as focal point of a permanently generalized logic of exclusion and a deepening of social hierarchy. Be it unemployed persons, be it students without rich parental home, be it paperless and other people who were working in precarious conditions - more and more people were confronted with the unreasonable demand of social apartheid, they were threatened to be pushed away to the edges of society.
To which extent the politics of exclusion which were carried out by the lager-regime (keyword: jungle-homes in Mecklenburg Vorpommern) were part of a general tendency within society one could see exemplaryly in the neoliberal management of the urban space: This space would be more and more parceld out into seperated zones or ‚honeycombs‘. The normatively based patterns of behaviour for the single zones would be pushed through by a net of different techniques of controlling, observing and excluding. This would comprise not only fences, security-services and video-cameras, but even more subtle techniques: Sometimes homeless people for instance would be expelled from shopping-malls by cold gusts of wind which could be guided via air conditioning system to particular places. These politics aimed to fix social differences territorially: unwanted persons should be spatially restricted for the sake of consum, security and cleanliness. Mostly affected were those fringe groups and minorities who were declared in the public discourse as ‚dangerous classes‘ such as homeless people, skater, young men with migration-backround, drug-users, prostitutes, etc. In the same way as many refugees those people were endangered by (further) expulsion to be pushed into the "outside which can be everywhere because it is the blind spot of the liberal democratic inclusion - the non-place of the reversal of the bio-politically `live-making‘ into an inconspicuously societal or real ‚letting-die‘ (...) (Oliver Razac, Politische Geschichte des Stacheldrahts, Berlin 2003)
Last but not least: Symmetrical counterpart of ‚the‘ lager were gated communities - guarded residential areas. Without any doubt they could be seen as the most paradox expression of the neoliberal politics of space: Even in the US there were about 8 millions people who were voluntarily locked up and guarded by security-people - out of fear of crime and out of the wish to stay unmolestedly among themselves.
An enlarged understanding of camps which was intending to build up political bridges should eventually analyze camps from an economical point of view as well. For instance Tobias Pieper has come to the conclusion that one of several functions of the camp-system was to funktion as a flexible pool of workforce for the local (regular and irregular) labour-markets. Only in Baden-Würtemberg (south of Germany) about 42% of all refugees got regularly temporary work-permissions by the employment exchanges (Arbeitsamt). The other way around many refugees in/near Berlin were working irregularly. Often the private owners of the refugee-homes were acting as irregular job agencies - including comission. Therefore they would accept as well that many refugees wouldn‘t really live in the refugee-homes themselves (because they were working somewhere else). In the same way it was important to keep in mind that about 50% of the inhabitants of the new detention centres (Ausreisezentrum) were going into illegality. They would serve as irregular workforce as well.
Basically those thoughts concerning an enlarged understanding of camps are not questioned within the preparation-alliance. Nevertheless there is strong worry about inapropriate comparisons: For instance it would be a political wrong levelling if in the end higher swimminpool-fees would directly be compared with guarded or even closed camps. Instead of this it was always necessary to see the fundamental difference: By deportation refugees and migrants were endangered to loose not only all social rights but also all civil rights (which are anyway strongly restricted); they are threatended to be reduced to their ‚naked existence‘ (Giorgio Agamben). Therefore dentention-camps should be seen as the most dramatic kind of deprivation - as the peak of the iceberg without ignoring the iceberg itself.

Published in: analyse und kritik 483