Statelessness & Citizenship Review 2021 3(2) constructs. Khosravi calls this ‘circulation’; people are moved back and forth between localities, positions and categories as a form of control. 111 Many times, this circulation is experienced as having to start all over again. The ‘final’ temporal construct is the lingering on in the limbo that materialises when being denied a residence permit, but at the same time, being ‘undeportable’. Respondents recounted the fear that is connected to the uncertainties of the upbringing and future of their children, their schooling, housing, employment and income. Children up to the age of 14 have been born, socialised and educated in Sweden, and might be entering a phase after high school but their continuous life and future are put on hold. 112 One particular story that I would like to highlight, which illustrates the slow violence of the temporal aspects of governmentality, is that of Khalil, a man in his 50s whose parents became refugees in 1948 and left Gaza for a country in the Gulf. 113 Citizenship has never been an option for foreign workers in the Gulf, but residence permits are always related to work and a guarantee by an employer/‘sponsor’ in the kafala-system, which regulates work migration in the Gulf. In 2011, Khalil was evicted for unclear reasons. He tried to find a job in Turkey but was also deported from there. He eventually arrived in Sweden but was denied asylum and the SMA’s decision was to deport him to the United Arab Emirates (‘UAE’). Khalil was still stateless even though he was in possession of UNRWA registration documents and an expired UAE identity document. I first met Khalil at a collective hunger strike held by stateless Palestinians in Gothenburg in autumn 2014, who were protesting both the lack of decisions in their asylum processes and the decisions to deport them to, for example, Gaza. He was still energetic, cheerful and hopeful, at the forefront of around 30 other men. In 2018, six years after his initial application, he received a temporary residence permit due to ‘practical impediments to enforcement’. At that time, he had not seen his family for seven years, and he described in excruciating detail how the waiting, the suspension of time and the slow violence of the state was experienced as a physical detention and he was now a broken person. Not knowing about the process, the outcome and being denied a proper (possible) life in the meantime, was a physical experience, as much as a temporal one. A few months later, he received contradictory information from the SMA about how to apply for a prolongation of the temporary permit. He became seriously ill and needed surgery as well as a long recovery. 114 In June 2020, he obtained another temporary residence permit for 13 months. 115 This time, the duration of his stay in Sweden was to his advantage, as this might eventually lead to a positive decision, since duration of the stay was interpreted in line with European regulations on the right to ‘private and family life’. This right has to do with the possibility of developing relationships with other people, which is assessed in relation to time: The Migration Agency notes that you have now been in Sweden for soon eight years, you have also upheld a residence permit for 13 months, whereby you should be considered to have certain connection and adjustment to Sweden. The Migration Agency has further assessed that there is a consisting or at least a prolonged 111 ibid. 112 Conversation with Mohammed (Helena Lindholm, Gothenburg, 28 March 2020). 113 Conversation with Khalil (Helena Lindholm, Gothenburg, October 2014 and 18 August 2018). 114 Email conversation with Khalil (Helena Lindholm, 2018). 115 Swedish Migration Agency decision, Gothenburg (2020) (copy on hand with author). 280