Waiting as probation: selecting self-disciplining asylum seekers

Abstract

This article diagnoses and critiques a type of governmentality associated with waiting during protracted asylum appeal procedures by drawing upon data from a multi-methodological study of asylum adjudication in Europe. Focusing on Austria, Germany and Italy, we explore the use of integration-related considerations in asylum appeal processes by looking at the ways in which these considerations permeate judges' decision-making, particularly, but not exclusively, on the granting of national, non-EU harmonised protection statuses. Building on insights from the literature on conditional integration we question the implicit sociopolitical biases and moral assumptions that underpin this permeation. We show that the use of integration-related considerations in asylum appeals transforms migrant waiting into a period of probation during which rejected asylum seekers' conducts are governed and tested in relation to the use of time. More than simply waiting patiently, rejected asylum seekers are expected to wait productively, whereby productivity is assessed through the neoliberal imperatives of entrepreneurship, autonomy and selfimprovement. We thus contribute to scholarship on migrant waiting by showing how time is capitalised by state authorities even whenand actually becauseit offers opportunities for migrants.

Claiming Time Within Migrations

“…The life journey (Irving, 2017) of migrants, even after migration, is marked by experiences of waiting and stuckedness "as a result of racialised labour and citizenship regimes in destination countries" (Pettit & Ruijtenberg, 2019: 2). Waiting is a "mechanism of temporal governance" (Vianelli et al, 2022) that is exercised in a discretionary and arbitrary way. Asylum-seekers' experiences with the politics of time starts during their journeys, with their never-ending attempts to reach a safe country from all borders areas.…”

As if there was a border. Bordering through excision in Melilla and the Canary Islands

“…Similarly, obtaining a residency card can still be synonymous with discrimination and victimization, if achieved by flattening the foreigner's experience into legal categories which recognize the 'suffering' body as the only tolerable stranger (Galli, 2020;Ticktin, 2011). Court ethnographies highlight that the legal apparatus is not a neutral arbitrer that mediates between the state and the foreigner: it contributes to border (un)making by shaping migrant subjectivities (Vianelli et al, 2022), by adjudicating on competing versions of the past and of the future (Fisher et al, 2022), by ruling on the imaginary of nation-making (Vogl, 2014). The law, in other words, is part of a larger web of social and political interactions (Kawar, 2015).…”

Exposing the private, engaging in the public. Asylum seekers, intimate publics and normative performances of public participation

“…Importantly, these shifts in governance strategies do not target only the formal members of the political community, but also those who are required to show their willingness to become part of it (Ong, 2003). On the one hand, access to rights and inclusion in political and social spaces are contingent upon the ability to display specific moral qualities and correct performances of “civicness” (Schinkel, 2010; Vianelli et al., 2021). On the other hand, integration projects are embedded in a “participation paradox”, as immigrant public participation is both demanded and feared (Klarenbeek and Weide, 2020).…”

“… 3 Since the 90s, a set of “integration tools” are increasingly presented and perceived as mandatory, despite their non-binding nature, within the asylum system and beyond (Sorgoni, 2015). At the same time, integration-related considerations – laden with implicit moral assumptions – permeate asylum appeal processes, in Italy as well as in other EU countries (Vianelli et al., 2021). …”