Due to various legal and practical factors the majority of rejected asylum seekers in Malta cannot be deported. Non-deportable migrants are in a legal grey area: they are not considered official members of the receiving state, cannot be deported, and cannot leave the country independently. They receive no formal residency status, which can lead to a situation in which they have limited access to employment, basic services, and medical care for several years. Using a micro analytical perspective, I ask how the lives of migrants are impacted when the decision to deport an individual remains unrealized. How do they manage everyday life? What strategies do they apply in the areas of conflict between autonomy and heteronomy? Following the ethnographic border regime analysis, I link different levels of analysis and examine interactions of various actors in migration-related activities.

After studying empirical cultural science and educational science in Tübingen, Sarah Nimfuhr initially worked as an integration consultant at the Vienna Red Cross, and then as a scientific project assistant at the Institute for Political Science in Vienna. She has been a DOC fellow of the Austrian Academy of Sciences since 2016, as well as a lecturer at the Institute for European Ethnology at the University of Vienna.