Waiting out the condition of illegality in Norway

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among long-staying rejected asylum seekers in Norway, the chapter examines what it means to endure or ‘wait out’ the condition of illegality. Scholars have importantly drawn attention to the ambivalent nature of endurance. It can be approached both as a governmental tool that encourages self-control in times of prolonged crisis and as affects and practices that allow people to persevere under unfavourable conditions. Through these practices and affects new forms of life can emerge. The chapter suggests that the ambivalence between subjugation and potentiality makes endurance a productive lens for analysing why irregularised migrants remain, even when faced with exclusion, hardship and suffering. Examining the social and temporal dynamics of ‘waiting out’ the condition of illegality, the chapter asks: What practices and affects of endurance emerged under this condition? How did ‘waiting out’ work as a mode of governing? The chapter also unpacks how endurance was entangled with a sense of spatio-temporal entrapment and the more hopeful form of ‘waiting for.’