Lost in Transition to Adulthood

The so-called 'refugee crisis' has been portrayed as an invasion that threatens<br> Europe and calls its sovereignty into question, prompting exceptional emergency<br> responses. These (re)bordering processes highlight Europe's uneven, discriminatory,<br> and racialized filtering system. European nation-states sort desired and undesired<br> migrants through sets of precarious administrative statuses that translate into<br> limited access to resources, most notably the formal labor market. European border<br> regimes impose specific spatialities and temporalities on migrants through long-term<br> physical and social deceleration: territorial assignation, enduring unemployment,<br> forced idleness, and protracted periods of waiting. These temporal ruptures interrupt<br> individual biographies and hinder the hopes of a young population seeking a better<br> future. However, some find ways to navigate the socio-spatial deceleration they face.<br> In this paper, I explore how European border regimes affect the trajectory of Sub-<br> Saharan male migrants and how they appropriate such temporal dispossession. I use<br> biographical analysis and participant observations of a squatting organization in a<br> Swiss city to scrutinize the everyday practices and aspirations of a population made<br> illegal and, as a result, denied access to social markers of maturity. I investigate<br> how time intersects with physical, social, and existential im/mobility. I argue that,<br> in navigating spaces of asymmetrical power relationships, impoverished migrants<br> find autonomy in illegality. Neither victimizing nor romanticizing illegalized migrants'<br> trajectories, this paper offers an ethnographic analysis of the capacities of an<br> impoverished population to challenge European border regimes.