Examples of such laboratories include islands, refugee camps and asylum centres as destinations and stopovers for migrants as well as borders and border zones. Islands have often been used for experiments in involuntary ecological transformation and as heterotopias, where they function as prisons, hospitals, asylums and refugee camps. Refugee camps and asylum centres are always also spaces of waiting — waiting without knowing when this state will end, for onward travel, for asylum to be granted or denied. Borders and border regions are not only political and territorial demarcations, but also as zones of exchange, where their inhabitants share a geography, climate and vegetation.