Rearguard Theory and Freedom of Movements: The Liberation Struggle of Refugees in Denmark

An “action of theoretical intervention woven inside forms of life”, this paper engages in rearguard theory (Santos, 2014: 13) with Freedom of Movements, and aims to contribute to our understanding of how racism localizes in Denmark focusing on migration detention camps and deportation camps, specifically Sjælsmark. To this end, the paper combines insights from the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) approach with Boaventura de Sousa Santos’ work on sociology of law and Achille Mbembe’s necropolitics. With Ruth Gilmore’s definition of racism as “the state-sanctioned and/or legal production and exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerabilities to premature death, in distinct yet densely interconnected political geographies” (Gilmore 2007: 28), the paper claims that the policies and legal frameworks that allow to put this system in practice—the death project—materializes in Europe in relation to its immigrant populations. The paper concludes that, in face of the problems with prisons and camps and the close relationship between law and exclusion, rights and death, struggles that aim to abolish prisons and camps offer strong alternatives as practices of freedom.