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Paper short abstract:

In this paper I examine the negotiation of "temporal horizons" between migrants seasonal workers and their employers, other workers and social operators. Migrants'condition of displacement produces a deep sense of uncertainty but is also assessed as a transitionary phase in their life course

Paper long abstract:

Multiple structural forces constrain migrants in general and refugees and asylum seekers in particular from using their capacities and making free choices: enduring displacing forces hinder return; marginalising forces prevent local social inclusion; immobilising forces block chances to seek a future elsewhere. However they develop diverse strategies to navigate through governance regimes: home-making attempts, resistance to existing power hierarchies and imaginations of a future 'elsewhere' are all expressions of displaced persons' agency-in-waiting (Mielke, 2016). Starting from life histories collected among asylum seekers employed as seasonal workers in Northern Italy, I analyse their different temporalities of displacement, defined as their personal and social appropriation of time and I enquire how they make sense of their condition of uncertainty and protractedness. On the one hand, legal uncertainty is experienced as a lack of protection, existential uncertainty and social marginalisation. On the other hand, they regard their condition as a transitionary phase in the cycle of displacement, and indeed in their life courses. In this way they enact their agency-in-waiting while making their futures based on their everyday practices and social relations. Their assessments of temporal horizons is profoundly different from the assessment of other social actors with whom they interact, as their employers, autochthonous workers, or social operators employed in reception centres. These divergences could produce misunderstandings and conflicts in everyday interactions and to worsen the experience of protractedness.