Abstract
This article aims to reflect on the emotional experience of immigrants as undocumented and it’s based on research that started in 2017 in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area. Being undocumented is not exclusively related to the incompletion of the administrative and legal process. It is also an experience of apprehension of time and its deceleration, accompanied by an emotional experience that raises many questions, anxieties, and doubts about life as an immigrant. The empirical data hereby presented is the result of fieldwork in multi-situated terrains, using semi-structured interviews with undocumented immigrants from different communities, namely Bangladesh, Brazil, Egypt, Guinea Bissau, Guinea Conakry, Cameroon, Nigeria, Pakistan, India and Angola, and addresses matters such as regularization; residence time in Portugal; work; relationship with the State; the absence of social rights; personal goals and the emotional states of someone who lives or has lived through this situation.
Keywords:
immigrants; irregularity; emotions; public policies; integration