ABSTRACT
Political modernity represents a relentless struggle on maps. The relation between a map and 'its' territory, that is the very political notion of space, is far from being a simply descriptive matter. A map produced by a collective group of researchers and activists that directly illustrates this complex, de- and reterritorializing movement. It represents the impressive proliferation of transit, identification and detention camps for persons variously 'out of place' which is investing the European Union (EU) space as well as the territory surrounding its external borders. The hypothesis advanced here is that the specific 'productiveness' of the camps consists in the very act of decreeing the existence of individuals liable to internment, above individual responsibility and biographical factors. According to the detention machine directly produces and ratifies a difference of status among the population of a given territory, and, in so doing, differentially decomposes the forms of political membership, the recognition of rights, the very notion of citizenship.
