Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review 2023, 59(3): 293-314 | DOI: 10.13060/csr.2023.036

‘Not Knowing When It's Going to Happen and What's Going to Happen’: The Time Politics of Applying for a Residence Permit in the Czech Republic

Veronika Kotýnková Krotká ORCID...
Faculty of Science, Masaryk University, Brno

This study focuses on the time politics involved in applying for a residence permit in the Czech Republic, with a focus on non-European Union (EU) applicants. It examines how governmentality and state superiority are represented and performed within the bureaucratic procedure of the application process. Based on the results, I argue that the application process bureaucracy is tied to time politics - practices that govern others through time. The paper is based on research realised in Brno, the second-largest city in the Czech Republic, and uses qualitative, ethnographic observations and semi-structured interviews with immigrants from non-EU countries who applied for a long-term residence permit. The paper examines time politics within this process, highlighting its unpredictability, disrupted temporal linearity and chrononormativity. In this context, the respondents describe the waiting period as a moment of being in between - temporally, spatially and socially. Therefore, I argue that the time politics experienced throughout the application process significantly influences the lives of applicants. The interviews revealed that the applicants were caught in a liminal position with an uncertain ending, exemplified by the impossibility of moving (temporally, spatially and socially) - a feeling often described as stuckedness. Consequently, this time politics and the temporal inequality and disadvantages experienced during the process contribute to exclusion from mainstream Czech society and produce structural invisibility.

Keywords: time politics, waiting, chrononormativity, bureaucracy, migration

Received: May 27, 2022; Revised: June 6, 2023; Accepted: June 8, 2023; Prepublished online: July 10, 2023; Published: August 17, 2023  Show citation

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Kotýnková Krotká, V. (2023). ‘Not Knowing When It's Going to Happen and What's Going to Happen’: The Time Politics of Applying for a Residence Permit in the Czech Republic. Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review, 59(3), 293-314. doi: 10.13060/csr.2023.036
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