Epilogue: Towards an Abolitionist Camp Studies

ABSTRACT Camp studies have grown markedly in recent years. While the field has by and large been critical of camps as spatial technologies of protective custody, biopolitical control, minority oppression, racial segregation, custodial care, militarised rule and colonisation, there has been a reluctance to embrace more overtly abolitionist approaches, which have become increasingly influential in research on other carceral spaces like prisons or detention centres. In this article, I contend that Camp Studies today cannot remain simply another field of detached academic enquiry but has a responsibility for solidarity with encamped people in thought and action. If we are to be engaged and critical scholars of camps who are committed to social justice and liberation, then we must throw our weight behind the already unfolding abolitionist praxes of those who actively struggle against their own encampment. However, instead of exceptionalising the camp as a bounded carceral technology that can be undone in isolation, the ultimate task of carceral abolitionism writ large is to reimagine society, reformulate belonging and dismantle the nation‐state, so that the camp itself becomes unthinkable as a solution.