Paper short abstract:

The process of illegalization limits rejected asylum seekers' access to resources, mobility and spaces. Based on ethnographic insights from departure camps in Switzerland, I show how illegalization produces spaces of othering, which are challenged.

Paper long abstract:

Rejected asylum seekers' illegalized status serves as a justification for political, social, and legal processes of exclusion. This exclusion should be viewed in light of historical and contemporary mechanisms of racialization and spatial exclusion of 'Others' in Switzerland.

First, this paper shows that the process of marking a person as "illegal" is part of their containment within racialized spaces. Second, it discusses how rejected asylum seekers engage in acts of contestation to counter their spatial containment. Third, this paper juxtaposes Swiss authorities' attempts to ignore, belittle, and delegitimize rejected asylum seekers' demands with its reputation as a humanitarian and neutral country.

I rely on four years of ethnographic fieldwork, joining activist and volunteer groups at departure camps and deportation prisons, volunteering at a political school offering language courses, and conducting go-along interviews with rejected asylum seekers.

Using an interdisciplinary approach this paper aims to show how the illegalization process reveals historical links to the mistreatment of people marked as "others" and constructing a hierarchy involving racialized separation and categorization to control their access to resources, citizenship and mobility. I aim to contribute to a broader debate about the constituting relationship between race, space and illegality and the significance of studying these aspects simultaneously when analyzing contemporary issues of illegalization.