This article aims to critically discuss selected approaches to conceptualizing the institutions of a refugee camp in the academic literature with particular focus on the works of Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben. It is empirically grounded in the analysis of the situation of Chechen asylum seekers living in a refugee camp in the Czech Republic (based on the author's research conducted in 2004). Three aspects of the camp environment are highlighted and the camp is analysed as: 1) a gendered space, 2) a violent space, and 3) a space of subversion, both on the part of refugees and the camp workers. Thus, the article sheds light on the multiplicity of social relations in the camp and illustrates how the camp environment produces certain types of subjectivities through relations of power. It also stresses that refugees employ various strategies to respond to and to subvert these forces. Finally, the author emphasizes the need to forge connections between general analyses of socioeconomic and political mechanisms underlying spatial and social exclusion of migrants with micro-level accounts of material conditions and the complex webs of social interactions in particular institutional settings that are designed to "manage" and control people's movements across national borders.

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Eurasia Central Europe refugee Czech Republic Europe asylum seeker Russian Federation Chechnya