Heterochrony in the migrant emergency: waiting time and hectic pace in the Italian asylum/hospitality system

Abstract

Since the 90s, in Italy, the governance of human mobility based on the logic of emergency has produced and strengthened notions such as unpredictability, immediacy, timeliness, and urgency, with significant repercussions and substantial outcomes now recognizable at the global level. In this contribution, the intention is, therefore, to demonstrate how the structural time of the emergency – imposed as unique and universal – is sprawling into a multiplicity of temporal forms (heterochrony) concerning the materiality of social frameworks, perceptions, experiences, and practices of the different actors involved in the field of asylum/reception system. The analysis concern some cases that emerged during a long ethnographic experience (2016-2020), underlining the importance of realizing an “anthropology of emergency time.” In order to highlight the ongoing transformative interchange between time and the different processes outlined in time, the article will reflect, on the one hand, on the “experiences of waiting” of asylum seekers; on the other hand, on those characterized by the hectic rhythms of work in the asylum/reception system.