Drawing on the life histories of refugee activists in the French department of Ariège, we reveal a complex territoriality that, depending on the spaces considered, produces singular and distinct forms of mobilisation, inherited from past migratory experiences, the engagement of neo-rurals and the social networks linking mountains, valleys, piedmont towns and the Toulouse conurbation. We highlight the uniqueness of the Ariège 'refuge', where mechanisms of migration control are relativised through a distancing enabled by both the topography and the social space of exile activism.