‘Plenty of Time, Out of Time’. Plurality of Timing in the Italian Asylum Reception System. Outcomes from the Field

In recent years, there has been a noticeable emphasis on migration processes framed within the context of a ‘crisis.’ This emphasis underscores a unique and exceptional temporality. The ‘European migration crisis’ has presented an unprecedented challenge, leading governments to predominantly adopt an emergency-oriented approach as the exclusive means to address and conceptualise this crisis. This contribution aims to elucidate how the ‘emergency’s structural time,’ posited as a distinct and universally applicable notion, can profoundly influence the practical aspects of social frameworks, perceptions, experiences, and practices involving various actors within the Italian asylum reception system. Through empirical analysis of specific cases that emerged during extensive ethnographic fieldwork between 2016 and 2020, focusing on bureaucratic practices, relationships, and intimacy, I will illustrate an ongoing transformative interplay between Time and the various processes outlined ‘in Time.’ More specifically, this study delves into the waiting experiences of asylum seekers on the one hand and the hectic experiences of social operators working within the asylum reception system on the other. The objective is to demonstrate how the prevailing emergency-centric approach within this system steers these individuals into specific temporal frameworks. As a result, external influences and pressures render the realisation of their hoped-for near future unattainable, leaving the present disconnected from their particular aspirations. This mechanism initiates processes that disrupt existence, thereby compromising prospects of stability. Nonetheless, these subjects can develop and implement specific strategies to circumvent constraints and mitigate the institutional violence and exclusion that often characterise the Italian asylum reception system.