Routing the camp: experiential authority in a politics of irregular migration

Often approached through Giorgio Agamben’s work, the camp-like spaces associated with asylum-seeking and refuge in Europe have been portrayed as sites of abjection to a predatory sovereign logic. In this article, I claim this reading overlooks the forms of authority in play at such sites. Through a theoretical interrogation of a politics of irregular migration and an empirical investigation of No Borders’ practices, I emphasise the ‘experiential’ forms of authority through which subjects are already taking and remaking the meaning of citizenship. Through Jacques Rancière’s philosophy of politics and sense, I argue that the task of discerning productions of experiential authority within new geographies of mobility is a critical political task of our time.