ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes to de-center the way we look at the central question that has been asked-that of the ghetto-and change the way we think about it. It looks at the ghetto from the point of view of its relationship to the city and its distance from the state, and not from an aprioristic ethnic or religious point of view. The chapter examines the encampments established along the route of Afghan migrants in Europe, whether in the Greek town of Patras near its harbor or in the forest near Calais in the north of France. The black American ghetto and the French so-called ghettoized suburbs, as well as the Palestinian refugee camps, become places that we want to leave as soon as social mobility makes it possible, even if they have become places of identity or have a social, cultural, and even possibly political anchoring.
