Struggling for Time on Lesvos: The Impact of EU and National Legislation and Procedures on Refugee Temporalities

Since the summer of 2015, the Greek island of Lesvos has been centre stage of the so-called refugee crisis and one of the sites where new EU policies for migration control have been tested and implemented. This combined study of jurisprudence with ethnographic fieldwork aims to understand the impact of the asylum regime on the experience of time for refugee applicants on Lesvos. Indeed, different national and EU laws and regulations affect people on the move and their ability to continue their journeys through Europe, forcing them to remain on Lesvos for variable amounts of time waiting for their asylum procedure while experiencing a legal limbo. Long, indefinite waits and abrupt accelerations of the procedure are both part of the temporality of control imposed on refugee subjectivities. Through testimonies collected during ethnographic fieldwork, time is here analysed both in its productivity in terms of humanitarian and labour economies, and in its effects on subjectivities. Different forms of temporal and economic oppression are highlighted, as well as the resulting resistance against these conditions enacted by the refugee population.