RATIONALE Our program is about prisons, camps for illegal immigrants and asylum seekers, and labour camps in different countries. There is a need to understand the procedures, the actors, and the effects of confinement. Asymmetrical power relationships between inmates and authorities, especially the state, lead to these places of confinement. We will analyse behaviours, representations, strategies and evolutions in the production of order and the exercise of power. We scrutinize the spatial dimension of confinement systems, considering the latter as key loci of political and social control. Have we to consider space as a simple frame and background of confinement, or does it contribute to enact power relations and social categories? Our main hypothesis is that these confinement systems have specific spatialities. Because of their agency and their social dimension, these spatialities fully participate in the logics of confinement. BACKGROUND, OBJECTIVE AND SCIENTIFIC ISSUES Scientific studies leave great space for further investigation. Our presentation of previous researches on confinement highlights how very few geographers have addressed this issue. In the meantime, sociologists, historians, and specialists in political science and law have all underscored the importance of space if one considers the origins of systems of confinement, their ways of functioning or their links to the outside world. Here is undoubtedly the key impact of our research: geography has not addressed this issue. Our approach adopts two original positions: 1.Gathering various geographical spaces All the studied spaces share two distinctive features: physical enclosure, whether complete or incomplete; imposition of confinement by authorities. We do not consider the spaces we study as equivalent. Their similarities and their differences underscore the spatialities of confinement. 2.Initiating a geographical approach of confinement We do not address confinement as a result, but as a process, which is born from the interactions between inmates and guards (i.e. the state apparatus). We focus on the outcome of the process of confinement, on its impacts on society and space. SCIENTIFIC AIMS AND METHODS Space plays a pivotal role in confinement on two levels, which complete one another. Spatial arrangements constitute the first issue to address, inasmuch as they constitute the material result of a policy of confinement. The second issue to be addressed is the spaces considered as lived, experienced, 'dwelled' places: their inhabitants make them real places, even if life is tough inside. Hence two scales are considered according to these two hypotheses. -At the scale of nation states, we will have to check if authorities spread out places of confinement as a way to fix certain parts of the population and to put them far away from the rest of the population (1st workpackage). Yet, in front of that, movements and routes are enacted by 'inmates': confined places are inserted into networks (2nd workpackage). These two entangled dynamics lead to new spatial configurations -At the scale of the places of confinement, we will address the way in which institutional power is exercised. We want to assess how power remove individual characteristics from inmates through spatial mechanisms and through a discipline of the bodies (3rd workpackage). In the same time, places of confinement are resisted, contested by inmates, who can continue to exist through these ways of resistance (4th workpackage). Our research project is based on heavy empirical fieldwork, in 11 countries, where we have already strong connections and where we have sometimes even launched some experimental inquiries. Comparing these various fields bring a strong added value to address the structural components of confinement. It brings about a full body of knowledge on the kind of spaces and on the places of fieldworks. Comparative approach is both a method and a question of position. Expected results and potential impact Knowledge -Construction of a theoretical framework to study confinement -Rearticulating the local and the global -Participating into the new developments of Francophone political geography Methods -Deepening the comparative approach in geography -Developing a methodological approach useful for other topics Institutions -Strengthening and developing collaboration with foreign scientists -Contributing to an interdisciplinary approach of social facts through spatial lenses -Building a local and international network studying confinement Social reception -Proposing new topics for teaching lectures -Developing scientific appraisal of the issues of confinement for various authorities -Bringing back the result to NGOs and civil society TEAM MEMBERS B. Michalon (85%), coordinator T. Bruslé (25%) O. Clochard (100%) M. Darley (50%) A.-F. Hoyaux (60%) M. Morelle (25%) O. Milhaud (50%) D. Zeneidi (35%) O. Pissoat (25%)