On multiple spacetimes in the everyday lives of irregular migrants in Finland

Abstract

<p>This article explores how multiple layers of spacetimes overlap and merge in individuals’ lives and relationships, transforming, enhancing, and/or hampering their abilities to interact with the environment. Drawing upon content‐analysed ethnographic notes, the article investigates the case of irregular migrants in Finland. It shows how their past activities, practices, and relationships, as well as their hopes and fears for the future, materially shape their now‐times. The latter change and evolve through a relentless combination of different past and future elements, in multiple, disparate, and often contradictory ways. This article considers how these migrants survive by inventing new activities and practices and building social relationships (with local residents and their own communities) on a daily basis, negotiating disparate elements, such as laws, digital and physical spaces, and work‐ and health‐related issues. In so doing, migrants acquire, in roundabout (non‐linear) ways, the knowledge and capacity to deal with their current, stressful conditions. The article shows how a spatio‐temporal approach can transform the emotional geographies of irregular migrants by shedding light on how they navigate the disparate and often conflicting elements of their lives, activities, and relationships.<br /></p>