Administrative Limbos: Exploring Conditions of Entrapment Among Racialised Citizens, Ethnic Minorities and Migrants
Administrative Limbos: Exploring Conditions of Entrapment Among Racialised Citizens, Ethnic Minorities and Migrants
Friday, 11 July 2025: 11:00-12:45
Location: FSE032 (Faculty of Education Sciences (FSE))
RC05 Racism, Nationalism, Indigeneity and Ethnicity (host committee) RC31 Sociology of Migration
Language: English
In recent years, multiple studies have explored how asylum seekers and refugees may find themselves in conditions of limbo, characterised by a suspension of time and standard legal provisions often associated to the permanence in liminal areas, such as camps and other border zones (Brun and Fabos, 2015). However, research has increasingly suggested that limbo-like situations are not limited to migration affairs. Limbo seems to be part of the everyday life for many groups of citizens when engaging with bureaucratic systems. Especially, individuals belonging to ethnic minorities, migrants and racialised citizens are disproportionally confronted with delays over missing documents, administrative exceptions and racially targeted burdens (Moynihan et al., 2022). Some minorities lack access to essential documents which may be needed as evidence in other procedures – leading to the latter being held up indefinitely (Nisar, 2018). In other cases, fraud enforcement unduly prioritizes ethnic minorities, leading to multiannual proceedings for individuals to prove their innocence and obtain compensation (Fenger & Simonse, 2024).
This session invites contributions examining limbo, liminality and entrapment conditions that vulnerable groups encounter throughout their lives. We aim for an interdisciplinary exchange of ideas from various methodological and disciplinary approaches. Relevant topics include, but are not limited to:
- Administrative liminality and entrapment in and after migration trajectories;
- The production of limbo-like situations due to racialized administrative requirements
- Personal and social costs of protracted limbos;
- Individual and collective display of agency and resistance in response to administrative limbos;
- The impact of unequally distributed limbos on trust in institutions.
Session Organizers:
Oral Presentations
Distributed Papers
See more of: RC05 Racism, Nationalism, Indigeneity and Ethnicity
See more of: RC31 Sociology of Migration
See more of: Research Committees
See more of: RC31 Sociology of Migration
See more of: Research Committees