Paper Short Abstract:

This paper explores how mothers are living with and navigating the asylum procedure, in order to shine light on the affective, embodied process of accessing legal status. It shows the interplay between the spatial-temporal and socio-legal im/mobilities of the procedure and of life course and family.

Paper Abstract:

This paper explores how mothers are living with and navigating the asylum procedure – within 'camps' and beyond – in order to shine light on the affective, embodied process of seeking access to legal status in Belgium. It focuses on the (inter)subjective temporal dimension of “trajectories”, understood as sequences of spatial-temporal and socio-legal im/mobilities that become entangled with temporalities of life course and social change. Based on follow-along ethnography, I demonstrate how obtaining asylum means navigating a multipronged labyrinth: moving from one reception centre to another, passing through institutional ’milestones’ of the procedure, with (semi)legal documents to obtain, and deadlines to comply with. I argue that, on the one hand, mothers adhere to the policy “ideal” of a step-wise, linear procedure to find stability and order. On the other hand, the asylum trajectory is understood as inconsistent, arbitrary and complex: it is lived through chronic waiting and accelerated movements, disrupting the temporalities of life course and family, most particularly in relation to pregnancies, schooling and housing. Drawing on the concepts of “temporal borders” and “stealing back time” (Khosravi, 2018), I demonstrate how mothers negotiate access to other temporalities (beyond waithood) to create liveable (private) spaces for their families