Prefigurating Democracy: The Pro-Palestinian Student Camps as Eventful Protests

Protests are instrumental in pressuring decision-makers, but they also cultivate capacity for prefiguration, or the embodiment of a just future through present actions. Student repertoires of action often include occupations, which both disrupt academic routines and serve as prefigurative spaces based on self-organization. This article discusses the theoretical and empirical relevance of pro-Palestine student camps as eventful forms of protest, defined as protests that transform social relations, identities, and temporal horizons. Drawing on fieldwork on pro-Palestine encampments during the winter and spring terms of 2024 in Italy, Spain, and the UK, and addressing the intersection of prefiguration and eventful protests, we highlight how the encampments’ prefigurative politics fostered the emergence of relational, cognitive and affective innovations, transforming conceptions of time. In a comparative perspective, we observe that the specific enactments of political ideals vary depending on the coalitions of actors involved and the opportunities available, both within and beyond the academic sphere. By opposing the neoliberal university—which narrows political imagination and depoliticizes student life—the pro-Palestinian encampments aim at demonstrating that another university is possible: one rooted in care, solidarity, and resistance to injustice.