The right to the camp: Spatial politics of protracted encampment in the West Bank Dorota Woroniecka-Krzyzanowska Department of Middle East and North Africa, Faculty of International and Political Studies, University of Lodz, Narutowicza 59a, 90-131 Lodz, Poland article info Article history: Received 11 November 2016 Received in revised form 19 August 2017 Accepted 21 August 2017 Keywords: Refugee camp Palestinian refugees Space of exception West Bank The right to the city The right to the camp abstract Most theoretical models of refugee camps draw on the work of Giorgio Agamben and regard them as sites of exception set outside the normal juridical order, designed to strip refugees of their citizenship and reduce them to bare life. Yet, the complex realities of protracted camps challenge the distinctions between camp and city, and exception and citizenship. To contend with this complexity, it is necessary to move away from essentialized models and address the material, social, and political realities of pro- tracted camps. I draw on the concept of ‘the right to the city’ to engage in discussion about civil rights of camp communities within the physical and political spaces of their prolonged residence. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank, I investigate (1) the articulations of exception that have shaped the means, conditions and character of its spatial development; and (2) bottom-up responses by which the residents address the reality of multifaceted neglect and political struggles around camp space. In particular, I focus on the camp leadership's efforts to claim their community's right to development, agency over the production and governance of camp space, and recognition of their political autonomy and camp character - a set of claims that can be called, ‘the right to the camp’. © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Refugee camps, and other shelter solutions for displaced pop- ulations, are designed and erected to deal with crises expected to last only a short period of time. Yet, the conditions for refugee re- turn often fail to materialize and their camps turn into places of long-term residency. By the end of 2015, nearly half of the world's refugees lived in protracted situations that, on average, lasted for over twenty-five years (UNHCR, 2016). The traditional discourse on refugee rights has been based on expected short-term residency and focused on immediate protection and basic human rights. This discourse has marginalized discussion of other, civil rights of ref- ugees living in protracted exile. To address this urgent, yet under- addressed problem accurately and responsibly requires a ‘radical re-conceptualization of what constitutes a “refugee camp”’ (Misselwitz & Hanafi, 2009, p. 360). This acknowledges that refu- gees' right to live full lives in the spaces of exile is not a substitute to their rights under international law, such as the right to return or for compensation. The idea that protracted camps are by definition incomplete urbanization projects (e.g. Agier, 2011; De Montclos & Kagwanja, 2000) placed somewhere between the city as a norm and the camp as an exception has critical shortcomings (Sanyal, 2011). It invites an unwelcome logic of continuum and progress from what the camps were designed to be - sites of care and control - to what they should become - i.e. cities. It risks oversimplification of dy- namics behind camps' spatial development and disregard to refu- gees' agency in shaping the character and future of their communities. Translated into the language of rights, the continuum is spread between the poles of ‘bare life’ produced by most coercive forms of encampment (Agamben, 1998) and the ‘expectations of citizenship’ entailed by the city (Malkki, 2002, p. 355). A growing body of work on protracted encampment has challenged the essentialized and clear-cut distinctions between camp, city, and citizenship. They showed how under different regimes of control the camps may become more privileged sites for political action than marginalized communities of the urban poor (Pasquetti, 2015) or offer their residents ‘a layer of protection that the poor do not have’ (Sanyal, 2012, p. 641). They indicated that formal citizenship may go in hand with administrative exclusion of camp commu- nities (Oesch, 2017) or in some context may be considered a threat E-mail address: dorota.woroniecka@uni.lodz.pl. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Political Geography journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/polgeo http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2017.08.007 0962-6298/© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Political Geography 61 (2017) 160e169