Paper details
| Paper authors | Lukas Kestens |
| In panel on | Everyday violence and resistance in Europe’s ‘migration management’ during the Covid-19 pandemic |
| Paper presenter(s) will be presenting |
In-Person / |
Abstract
In early-April 2020, Belgium’s asylum and migration administration resorted to an online preregistration procedure (OPRP) to process asylum applications during a series of covid-19 measures. Drawing on in-depth interviews and document analysis, I argue that the OPRP raised an internal(ized), administrative border that hindered asylum seekers from official asylum registration. This had a significant impact on specific groups of asylum seekers: as a considerable number of preregistrations failed, many asylum seekers were confronted with longer waiting times without shelter or material assistance. This was particularly problematic for non-prioritized asylum seekers (i.e., single men) and asylum seekers with less material, social and linguistic resources. Moreover, I describe how civil society organizations provided humanitarian support, resulting in an ambivalent situation where they indirectly helped to legitimize and extend the OPRP’s durability. Furthermore, I reflect on how Belgium’s shift to a digitalised pre-registration procedure gave rise to a so-called humanitarian and techno-borderscape, in which asylum seekers lose control over their on procedures and personal data, and subjects them to a ‘politics of exhaustion’.
Presenters
Ghent University