As the European asylum regime has undergone significant closure, protest camps and occupations have arisen in major cities as irregular migrants demand recognition and rights. These camps represent a spatial grounding of the politics non-citizenship; they locate and emplace demands for status at moments of contestation and transition, invoking a presence that reintroduces a specific border politics and engages questions of power and voice. Building on research in Vienna, and reflecting on solidarity and advocacy reports from other locales including Berlin and London, this paper explores the politics of the asylum seeker protest camps as a grounding which produces a change in the framework of citizenship. The camps challenge the fixity of location for not only non-citizens as ‘elsewhere’ but also for citizens as ‘here.’ It puts relations in motion, mobilizing power relationships that reveal new opportunities for politics of solidarity and participation that crosses borders.
