Radical Hope in asylum seeking: political agency beyond linear temporality

Abstract

Political agency of refugees and asylum seekers is usually recognised as different forms of activism, focusing on rights claiming or protesting on inferior living conditions. While these activities are vitally important in the struggle over refugee rights and policies, they are not the only ways in which asylum seekers and refugees act politically. Perhaps paradoxically, the publicly visible activities may hide from the view other forms of effective and critical agency. Based on research with asylum seekers in precarious situations, this paper discusses their subtle forms of agency seldom identified as political -least by those enacting them. Many asylum seekers and refugees have little faith in exerting change though public protest and explicitly dissociate themselves from politics. With focus on mundane critical attitudes and activities, this paper suggests that thin political possibilities open through agency motivated by 'radical hope'. The radically hopeful agencies in hopeless asylum situations, and their political dimensions, are identified through a non-linear understanding of temporality that challenges the received notion of refugeeness as generated in the past, struggled for in the present, and orienting towards a desired-for future.

Vital Conjunctures in Compound Crises: Conceptualising Young People’s Education Trajectories in Protracted Displacement in Jordan and Lebanon

“…By making lived time operational through these four times, we develop a format for analysing young people's trajectories by paying attention to the ways in which time is made and experienced and to how present realities and expected futures are navigated. The general uncertainty in young people's lives globally, and particularly for those who have been displaced or who are marginalised, means that trajectories do not always occur according to well-considered plans or 'ordinary' expectations (Kallio et al 2020;Poole and Riggan 2020). In the context of protracted displacement in Jordan and Lebanon, characterised by uncertainty and changing regulations, the interaction between structures and agency evident in vital conjunctures is further pronounced, and such moments are fractured and extended.…”

“…Understanding experiences of temporality in such circumstances can help us to understand these experiences and the dynamics of crisis (Cwerner 2001). We therefore also contribute to the growing body of work on time and temporality in forced migration, and particularly to the emphasis on how temporality shapes the experience and practices of displacement (Griffiths 2014;Brun 2016;Fontanari 2017;Kallio et al 2020;Poole and Riggan 2020).…”

Pre‐arrival temporalities of displacement in refugee migration: The case of resettled Ethiopian refugees in Australia

“…On the other hand, by conceiving time as an experience , researchers can unpack refugee subjectivities, which are lived, sensed, and negotiated. Although conceiving time as linear helps to capture important aspects of the refugee migration process (Carling, 2017; Kallio, Meier, & Häkli, 2020), considering it as nonlinear opens up the notion of multiple temporalities that help to analyse the relational, dynamic, and embodied experience of lived time (Dodgshon, 2008). In other words, these experiences are shaped by and embedded with the broader social and historical contexts, but can be experienced both collectively and individually.…”

Asylum Seeking, Border Security, Hope

“…Kallio et al. (2020) examine a range of positions opened by asylum seeking as act, from an established reading of it as a form of activism in which people seeking asylum are understood as exercising political agency to one of expression of radical hope. This understanding of asylum seeking connects with renewed interest in the phenomenon of hope among human geographers.…”