This chapter moves away from locating the camp within abstract space, and instead traces the State production of Ritsona Camp as abstract space, as a material site characterised by a high degree of surveillance and control, in which residents are understood or produced as biopolitical subjects. This chapter begins with an account of construction of the material camp, then charts the development of the built environment of the camp between 2016 until the cessation of fieldwork at the end of 2021. The State production of camp space paradigm is sharpened to account for the general absence of the Greek state on the ground; the mesh of camp management is sketched to give an overview of the various actors that were present in the camp space. This line of enquiry leads to an engagement with the work of Giorgio Agamben, and the various theoretical figures and concepts that characterise his work—sovereignty, homo sacer, bare life, and, crucially, the reading of the camp as a space of exception. The chapter proceeds with a brief analysis of IOM, the principal authority in the camp, responsible for its day-to-day functioning but relatively limited in its capacity to enforce its will—hence the designation ‘phantom sovereignty’. The chapter concludes by setting up the dynamic of spatial contestation, the multi-scalar, multimodular rewriting of camp space by camp residents that is the over-arching focus of the remaining chapters.