“A spectre is haunting Europe - the spectre of movement?” Movement and migration have again become the topic of parliamentary debates, pub conversations and street protests. They have become the challenge to the social, democratic and liberal veneer of European reality. That is, the continuous movement of migrants making a mockery of the idea of Europe as an impenetrable fortress, as well as the social and political movements that resist securitisation and precarity from within its borders, sometimes in solidarity with immigrants, sometimes not. The point of the collection of articles in this issue is then to start taking seriously the proposition ‘no borders’, also in the context of international no border camps such as this years’ camp at the heart of the EU’s administration in Brussels.

At the end of March, the Daily Mail published a story intended to discredit the Climate Camp. It ‘revealed’ the identity of one of the Camp’s two delegates flying to Bolivia to attend the ‘World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth’, called for by president Evo Morales. The story got re-published on Indymedia, later hidden by the site admins, attracting a storm of furious responses, with many registering their disgust at Climate Campers going to Bolivia.

In some ways, Copenhagen was post-politics in action. Thousands of politicians, business leaders and civil society actors came together in the Danish capital with no lesser aim than to ‘save the world’. Not just to prevent further wars, to eradicate poverty or to save humanity – no, the whole planet was at stake. And this was to be our last chance!

“What’s wrong with taxes?” – We were confronted with this sentiment by a large majority of those attending our workshop session at this year’s climate camp on Blackheath Common. To us it seemed a bizarre and surprising question coming from many of those who had come to an event that saw itself explicitly in the footsteps of the Wat Tyler-led anti-tax rebellion on the same heath some 650 years earlier.

On 1 April, sometime after 7pm, we happened to walk unchallenged into the area around the Royal Exchange, which was eerily deserted by protesters. A dozen or so policemen stood confused, almost dazed, at the corner of Cornhill and Birchin Lane – behind them the body of Ian Tomlinson. The death of a man at a protest that could hardly even be called a riot was certainly the most sobering aspect that we took away from that day.

Summit-hopping is so last year. Or is it? When we began conceiving this issue a few months back, it seemed like everyone was gearing up for a busy 2009: NATO’s 60th anniversary party, the G20 summit in London, the G8 in Italy, the UN’s climate summit in Copenhagen… Ten years on from the ‘battle of Seattle’, 2009 was set to be the return of summit-hopping.

These were our initial thoughts on arrival at the first German climate camp in Hamburg, which took place just one week after the British one in Kent. The Hamburg camp seemed less organised, there were far fewer people and the lack of a clear neighbourhood structure meant that we aimlessly walked around the site for a good half hour before finally pitching the tent in the ‘anti-barrio’ barrio.

For many of us a visit to Indymedia UK is a frustrating experience. Its open publishing newswire reveals an array of bizarre opinion posts, advertisements for activist meetings, petition requests and photo stories mixed in with the odd action or demonstration report.

Another airport, another camp. Many of the marquees and tents were the same, and most faces were familiar too. Yet the atmosphere at the No Borders camp last September was very different form the Climate Camp that had happened a month earlier. For a start, there were no police, journalists or livestock on site! Out were the dreadlocks; black hoodies were back in fashion. New airport, new camp, new politics? The No Borders camp had set up at Gatwick airport. Not to protest the flying habits of the middle classes but to demonstrate against the building of Brook House, a new detention centre at Gatwick airport.

“The decision to go to Heathrow was wrong!” This was the impulsive thought that was playing on our minds as we followed eight politicians and herds of protesters to Germany; to meet Shift contributors, eat in squats, sleep in tents and on dirty floors, drink 50p-a-bottle beer with ‘the movement’, and of course to “shut them down” – again.