From Asylum Back to Futurity

Abstract: This qualitative study is inspired by queer-feminist elaborations on normative and queer temporality, where I seek a temporal terminology of displacement in the context of migration in Sweden. The focus is on former asylum seekers from the region of former Yugoslavia, who in the 1990s, had years-long periods of uncertain residence statuses and unemployment. This interview-based study deals with retrospective narratives of uncertain-futures, often described as wasted years. I consider temporal stasis and the narratives of loss in their intersections with timings in heteronormative life trajectories and logics of progress and futurity. This thesis indicates that the valuation of time operates through mechanisms of power, where the terminology of sooner-later gives character to re/integration and measurements of normativity in working-age adult life. In the year 2011 time has regained its value and meaning. Considering the current hectic lifestyles in employ¬ment and stable residence, time is no longer still but experienced as quickly passing and in short supply. Another indication is that temporal stasis can be linked to the contexts of refuge as well as to the ambiguities regarding the predictable and monotonous “work-home” schedules, which offer other dimensions to work and free time.