New project to study Danish asylum encampment

The Danish Council for Independent Research – Humanities (FKK) has granted 5.3 million DKK to AMIS affiliate Simon Turner as PI for the research project: The Carceral Mobility Project (CAMP): Investigating carceral junctions in the Danish asylum regime.

The project explores a central paradox in Danish asylum encampment. On the one hand, the camps aim to control and manage mobile bodies. On the other, they are also connected to other spaces through flows of bodies, social media and the knowledge and practices of those who create and manage them. Crucially, the camps are at once sites of incarceration and junctions that connect and enable mobility. In order to understand asylum encampment as it is developing in Europe, this paradox of connectedness and incarceration – of carceral junctions – needs to be examined empirically and analytically.

The project therefore explores: how refugees navigate the terrains of encampment they encounter on their way to, through and in Denmark; but also how the camps themselves operate, interconnect, shift and “travel”. Bringing these perspectives together, it develops the theoretical concept of the “carceral junction” to grasp the paradoxical work and consequences of asylum camps in Denmark and beyond.

The project is lead by Associate Professor Simon Turner from AMIS, and will include fellow researchers: Associate professor Zachary Whyte, postdoc Katrine Syppli Kohl and a Ph.d.student.