Asylum Processes and Challenges: “We Neither Die nor Live but Receive Some Breath”

In this chapter, refugees recount their experiences in the asylum application process in various southern and western European countries. Although refugee status is a crucial objective for asylum seekers to emplace themselves in new receiving environments, it presents them with immense obstacles to acquiring it. Refugees endeavor to overcome these hurdles, covering a wide range of issues, including restrictive asylum regulations, protracted asylum procedures, accommodations, bureaucratic roadblocks, and different ways to find work and homes and to maintain mental and social stability and community cohesion. The narratives of the refugees include details about their experiences living in refugee camps in north and west European states or, in the absence of such refugee camps, experiencing homelessness, which they associate with abandonment, exploitation, humiliation, and permanent temporality.