Alternating temporalities experienced by North African unaccompanied minors in The Netherlands
A Story of Waiting and Hypermobility
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3656917 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Maha Naami (0000-0001-9492-2505), Valentina Mazzucato (0000-0002-3008-6541), Katie Kuschminder (0000-0001-5071-1060) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 51 |
| Issue | 13 |
| Pages | 3281-3299 |
| Publication date | 2025-08-09 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | New Community (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0047-9586 • E-ISSN: 1469-9451 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/1369183x.2024.2432445 |
| OpenAlex | W4404821437 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 24 |
Migration regimes in the Global North use endless waiting to discourage and govern migration. This leads to what has been described in the literature as a state of 'waithood'. In this paper, we analyse how North African unaccompanied minors navigate the waithood they are subjected to in the asylum system in the Netherlands. We challenge the idea that waithood slows down mobility or limits it to a geographical location, and we explore mobilities that have remained unaccounted for. Based on 16 months of in-depth ethnographic fieldwork among 22 North African unaccompanied minors, we find that these young people experience alternating temporalities. While living in housing and care facilities for asylum seekers, they first experience an enforced endless present. But, dissatisfied with the endless waiting, they often leave their care facilities and engage in a period of hypermobility where they move frequently and experience time as accelerated. Through hypermobility, young people reclaim agency over time but often accumulate physical and psychological trauma in the process. The paper deepens our understanding of how the temporalities of the asylum system shape the experiences of unaccompanied minors and how youth navigate and contest such temporalities
Hypermobility (travel · Media studies · Political science · Sociology · Temporalities · Gender Studies · History · Law · Migration and Labor Dynamics · Migration, Health and Trauma · Migration, Refugees, and Integration
‘Waithood’
Waiting and the Temporalities of Irregular Migration
Active Waiting and Changing Hopes
Multi-layered mobilities
Unaccompanied young refugees in the European Union
If we want, they help us in any way’
Unaccompanied minors in the Netherlands and the care facility in which they flourish best
Depression among unaccompanied minor refugees
Different perspectives on emotional and behavioural problems in unaccompanied refugee children and adolescents
The Tactics of Time and Status
A critical analysis of the creation of separated care structures for unaccompanied refugee minors
Time and the Migrant Other
Youth Mobilisation as Social Navigation. Reflections on the concept of dubriagem
A darker side of hypermobility
Out of Time
The Continuing Mobility of Migrants in Italy
The Times of Migration
Para além das fronteiras e dos limites
Motion squared
A not so multi-sited ethnography of a not so imagined community
The Language of Time
| Citations per year | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2025 - 2026 (2) |
| Highly cited | No |