Lives stalled: the costs of waiting for refugee resettlement

ABSTRACT

During their migration, refugees often pass through transit countries, especially before resettlement elsewhere. These stays in cities or camps may last several months or years as refugees await the next step of their journey. This paper examines the context of waiting for Iranian religious minorities who must first travel to Vienna, Austria in order to apply for resettlement to the U.S. Drawing on theories of waiting, I demonstrate how uncertainty and the passage of time shape refugees’ experience in transit contexts. While in Vienna, they endure months of compulsory idle waiting, free from persecution yet unable to begin the long-term process of settling in a new country. I argue that the duration of stay and conditions of life in transit contexts can have meaningful consequences for refugees. My findings demonstrate that even when waiting is temporary and remedied by eventual resettlement, time spent in transit carries material, emotional, and physical costs. Based on 43 interviews and participant observation with Iranian refugees in Vienna, this paper examines the precarity that is born from the uncertainty of waiting. Because resettlement ultimately provides stability, we tend to overlook the insecurities associated with this ‘pre-resettlement’ phase.

KEYWORDS:

• Forced migration
• refugee resettlement
• transit
• waiting
• uncertainty

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Roger Waldinger, Chiara Galli, and the anonymous reviewers for their feedback on this paper; Gail Kligman for her guidance throughout this project; and Sahar Kalantar for her translation assistance. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the American Sociological Association’s Annual Conference in 2019 and the International Association for the Study of Forced Migration Conference in 2018.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the UCLA Center for European and Russian Studies. https://www.international.ucla.edu/euro/