AbstractThis article examines the governance mechanisms regulating migrants' presence in Ventimiglia—an Italian city on the north‐west border—and migrants' agency, following the reintroduction of French border controls in 2015. The study looks at different kinds of camps: the formal one run by the Red Cross and the makeshift camps and settlements that sprang up over time. This work contributes to the academic debate on the interplay between migrants and border regimes by arguing two fundamental points. First, migration governance changed the nature of the makeshift settlements, pushing them from being spaces of autonomy, however precarious, to ones characterised more by exclusion and uncertainty. Second, the relationship between formal and informal spaces and migrants' agency is ambiguous and changes over time. Using a diachronic perspective and without underestimating migrants' agency, this paper denounces the inadequacy, fragility and violence of the border regime which migrants move into and within.