Lives in Waiting

Bibliographic Data

ID3948216
AuthorsSutapa Chattopadhyay (Women’s and Gender Studies and Development Studies, Saint Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada, corresponding author), James A Tyner (Geography, Kent State University College of Arts and Sciences, Kent, USA)
Year2022
Volume27
Issue4
Pages1231-1256
Publication date2022-08-08
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueGeopolitics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1465-0045 • E-ISSN: 1557-3028
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14650045.2020.1819247
OpenAlexW3088148887
LanguageEN
Citations received15
References cited85

The major contribution of this research is the analysis of chronic waiting of mobile subjects whose unclassifiability can neither situate them here nor there. Their undefinable political belongingness, spatial in-betweeness, alleged racial and ethnic impurity justifies the multi-modal and multi-axial forms of direct and indirect violence through extreme regulations, exceptional policies, brutality of police, border controls and profound exclusion of ordinary citizens. Illegalised border crossers’ encounter this ordeal as they challenge the sacramental aspect of border rituals becoming sacrificial subjects of the state. The justification of criminalising the travelling anti-citizens as security threats place visible and invisible borders that snare them into agonizing moments of waiting. This research focuses on the subaltern migrants experiencing abject precarity, vulnerability and uncertainty due to chronic waiting in the bureaucratic context of immigration controls and management. We drew upon migrants’ stories, informed by participatory principles, collected in different stages through short/preliminary surveys from Madrid (Spain) and Rome (Italy) conducted between 2013 and 2015. Their stories directed the conceptualisation of waiting as a salient feature of their everyday lives. Within the contemporary capitalist world order, marked by neoliberalism and militarism, the bureaucratically imposed conditions of waiting is political and intersectional, superimposed on citizenship, geography and history. In conclusion, we suggest, commoning, with its limitations, as a possibility to cope with the violence of waiting

Biopower · Bureaucracy · Citizenship · Criminology · Injustice · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Precarity · Racism · Sociology · State of exception · Subaltern · Gender Studies · History · Law · Migration and Exile Studies · Migration and Labor Dynamics · Migration, Refugees, and Integration

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