Bordering through recalibration: Exploring the temporality of the German “Ausbildungsduldung”

Abstract

The past decades of inquiry into the “what, where, and who” of borders have more recently been followed by an interest in borders’ temporal dimensions. In this article, I contribute to this research by analyzing how border temporalities operate on the scale of the lived experiences of rejected asylum seekers in Germany. My point of departure is the so-called Ausbildungsduldung, which since 2016 has permitted the suspension of deportation for rejected asylum seekers who start vocational training. After three years of training glimmers a promised residency permit. I approach the Ausbildungsduldung as a biopolitical technique of bordering and focus on its temporal aspects. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, I investigate how young Afghan asylum seekers negotiate the Ausbildungsduldung and how they can make its promised future their own. I show how the state deploys techniques of “future giving,” suspension, and deportability to produce skilled workers, and argue that the Ausbildungsduldung works as a bordering technique by producing affective attachments to a particular future trajectory, and by elevating certain ways of dealing with suspension and deportability in support of this trajectory. Showing how migrants are compelled to “wait well” while confined to a condition of deportability, the paper highlights how migrants’ experiences and practices of time become central to processes of bordering.

In their own time: Refugee healthcare professionals’ attempts at temporal re-appropriation

“…Access to citizenship often rests upon conditions like minimum legal residence periods and generational links (Cwerner, 2004). In her study on the suspension of deportation for rejected asylum seekers in Germany who start vocational training, Drangsland (2020) shows how the training contract – through its ‘future giving’, suspension and deportability – recalibrates individuals’ relations to their present and future. To capture the ways asylum regime and integration structures regulate individuals’ time, Cwerner (2004) speaks of time politics, referring to the organisational appropriation of time by public institutions.…”

“…A growing body of literature, particularly on asylum seekers and detainees, employs the temporal lens to probe how asylum seekers’ realities are (re)produced and governed. In particular, prolonged waiting, characterised by experiences of uncertainty and liminality, has been identified not merely as a by-product of the asylum regime but as a mechanism of power and control (Andersson, 2014; Brux et al, 2019; Drangsland, 2020; Griffiths, 2017; Hansen, 2020; Haas, 2017). Concurrently, studies suggest that forced migrants exercise agency over their time even in the most constrained of circumstances (Clayton and Vickers, 2019; Griffiths, 2014; Kallio et al, 2021; Rotter, 2016).…”

Embodying legal precarity: Living with ongoing short‐term protection in Germany

“…Foreigners in Germany who are required to leave but cannot be deported at present, receive a Duldung which translates into "toleration". It is not a residency status and describes a temporary suspension of deportation (Drangsland, 2020(Drangsland, : 1129. A Duldung can last from a few days to several months and needs to be renewed continuously.…”

Waiting as a redemptive state: The ‘Lampedusa in Hamburg’ and the offer from the Hamburg government

“…An example is the 2016 Integration act, which issues a toleration permit for deportable subjects who start vocational training and entails a promise of future residency given its successful completion. In the autumn of 2017, a core topic among migrants I met was how to relate to training and the promise of a German future (Drangsland, 2020). While Hamburg's politicians and activists framed the offer as exceptional, it articulates with present practices and rationalities of governing migrants in Germany.…”

“…To understand how the offer could be deployed to open a future in Germany, it must be contextualized in relation to past years changes in German migration regulation and policy discourse. I have discussed elsewhere how legalization for tolerated migrants through work or training has been lobbied for years by the craft sector and the Social Democratic Party who have framed their concerns within a discourse of demographic change and labour shortage (Drangsland, 2020). As Schultz (2015: 342, 344; argues, German migration policy has increasingly been 'reframed' through a 'demographic rationality', in which a population-resources epistemology combine with methodological nationalism.…”