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Paper long abstract

This paper examines the messy work of forging collective action within the queue at the Saint‑Denis prefecture in La Réunion. Based on eleven months of ethnographic fieldwork, it analyzes how modest acts of mutual aid appear in a setting normally understood as purely bureaucratic. Each weekday, hundreds of migrants gather to process residence permits, facing waiting times that create a debilitating state of liminality.

Within this pressure cooker, migrants negotiate shade, reserve places, and exchange information. These routine gestures form a fragile solidarity that emerges "despite everything." The paper centers on a specific event—a woman collapsing at the gate—to illustrate the affective complexity of this solidarity. The incident triggers a confrontation with guards and offers of help, yet simultaneously elicits suspicion among peers regarding the authenticity of the collapse.

The study reconceptualizes the queue as a laboratory for collective action, arguing that solidarity here is situational and intertwined with empathy, indifference, and paternalism. Rather than a universalist ideal, the paper demonstrates that solidarity in the queue is a survival mechanism constrained by institutional opacity. These findings suggest that the physical and emotional toll of administrative waiting creates a specific "conditions of possibility" for collective action, where support and suspicion are inextricably linked.