Refusing Refusal
B
Temporal Conduct and Counter-Conduct: ‘The Days I Lost’
The ‘disciplining of mobility’ through temporal management has been emphasised
by numerous scholarly works. 102 The asylum process is fragmented into
determined as well as unregulated time slots, limits, delays, deadlines to keep, 103
periods of waiting for interviews, decisions, new questions and restrictions for the
duration of temporary permits. For those denied asylum, there is a four-year period
before an application can be submitted again. During the protracted process as a
whole, time freezes. Respondents in my research experience life in an unending
limbo, 104 as ‘hell’ and as impossible, where time is stagnated and frozen; 105 how
time is lost in situations outside of normal time. 106 Waiting for some kind of
resolution has, for some, lasted as long as 17 years; 107 waiting represents
governmentality through uncertainty. 108
Hadi described the frustration during the process and how this time was ‘hell’.
I waited one year and two months for the decision. We had an interview in January
2008; my mom had arrived in December 2007. In January, I met my lawyer … .
After that, from January to September, no one saw me. Then they called me in
September. So those eight months, those were hell for real. Because you don’t know
and you begin to get a little used to live here. You are here. 109
In Hadi’s reflection, ‘you are here’ and you have become accustomed to ‘being
here’, while at the same time you cannot know for how long that condition will
last. Shahram Khosravi talks about the ‘theft of time’, as people come to lag behind
in future making, planning, education, work and income. 110
For those whose applications are rejected, but where eviction is not possible,
time is pressingly indeterminate as well as punishing and incarcerating. Appeals
are made and decisions awaited, referring to contextual hindrances of entering
countries of deportation. Respondents who have been staying on in Sweden recall
how they move between different categories as well as between different temporal
102 Tazzioli, Spaces of Governmentality (n 4) 16; Melanie B E Griffiths, ‘Out of Time: The
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
Temporal Uncertainties of Refused Asylum Seekers and Immigration Detainees’ (2014)
40(12) Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 1991; Melanie Griffiths, ‘The Changing
Politics of Time in the UK’s Immigration System’ in Elizabeth Mavroudi, Ben Page,
Anastasia Christou (eds), Timespace and International Migration (Edward Elgar Publishing
2017).
Tazzioli, The Making of Migration (n 15).
Deirdre Conlon, ‘Waiting: Feminist Perspectives on the Spacings/Timings of Migrant
(Im)mobility’ (2011) 18(3) Gender, Place & Culture 353, 356.
Helena Lindholm, ‘Arrhythmic Mobilities and Fragmented Mobilities: Journeys of
Palestinians Seeking Safety in Sweden’ (2020) 24(2) Journal of Refugee Studies 1657, 1661.
Griffiths (n 102); Jens Hainmueller, Dominik Hangartner and Duncan Lawrence, ‘When
Lives Are Put on Hold: Lengthy Asylum Processes Decrease Employment among Refugees’
(2016) 2(6) Science Advances e1600432; Sutapa Chattopadhyay and James A Tyner, ‘Lives
in Waiting’ (2020) Geopolitics <https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2020.1819247>.
Conversation with protesters at the Palestinian sit-in strike in Gothenburg, 2 March 2020.
Certainly, this is not limited to stateless asylum seekers; tedious bureaucratic management
and investigations impact vulnerable asylum-seeking groups in general, but statelessness
often implicates longer processes of verifying identities.
See Martina Tazzioloi, ‘The Temporal Borders of Asylum: Temporality of Control in the EU
Border Regime’ (2018) 64(1) Political Geography 13; Liza Schuster, ‘Dublin II and Eurodac:
Examining the (Un)intended(?) Consequences’ (2011) 18(3) Gender, Place and Culture 401;
Griffiths, ‘The Changing Politics of Time’ (n 102); Griffiths, ‘Anonymous Aliens?’ (n 22).
Interview with Hadi (Helena Lindholm, Gothenburg, 23 January 2018).
Shahram, Koshravi ‘Stolen Time’, Radical Philosophy (Blog Post, December 2018) 2.03
<https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/article/stolen-time>. But see Lindholm (n 105).
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