Governing migrants’ makeshift camps through abandonment: Rome and the Tiburtina railway station

Since 2015, EUrope has registered a variable presence of migrants’ makeshift camps across borders and urban areas. In these contexts, where abandonment has often appeared to be the main force ruling over migrants, grassroots solidarity groups have fulfilled state roles in safeguarding basic rights. By framing institutional abandonment as an active governance practice enacted by the state, this article reflects on its manifold and processual manifestations embedded in structural shortcomings. It will engage in a diachronic reading of the makeshift camps located in the surroundings of the Tiburtina railway station in Rome, where the Italian state has governed and actively maintained migrant makeshift spaces in an attempt to contain and channel an unwanted population. Based on material collected through a year-long ethnographic study in the Italian capital, the article aims to expand knowledge of urban makeshift camps and their multilevel governance. It demonstrates how migrants’ makeshift spaces become commodities exploited by the state to achieve its own goals, while also intentionally outsourcing its legal and political responsibilities to solidarity groups. The analysis explores the complex and contradictory roles of the various stakeholders involved in the reproduction of makeshift camps, demonstrating how antagonistic actors may share the same political objective.