Urban b/ordering in the city: spatial, temporal and affective dimensions of Afghan refugees’ urban survival in Paris

In contemporary European cities, border governance extends beyond territorial edges into the ordinary spaces, rhythms, and affects of urban life. This article examines how Afghan refugees in Paris encounter and negotiate the spatial, temporal, and affective dimensions of urban b/ordering. Drawing on eight months of ethnographic fieldwork, including 51 in-depth interviews, participant observation, visual documentation, and field notes in sites such as La Chapelle, Gare du Nord, Gare de l’Est, Parc de la Villette, and Ivry-sur-Seine, the study shows how precarious urban presence is produced through interconnected but distinct mechanisms. Spatially, refugees move through fragmented micro-geographies of conditional presence structured by camps, stations, infrastructures, associations, and recurrent evictions. Temporally, asylum procedures, Dublin-related uncertainty, institutional schedules, and service hours generate an uneven chronopolitics captured in the recurring rhythm of day in the city and night in the camp. Affectively, these conditions are lived through hyper-vigilance, fear, exhaustion, and fragile attachment, while shared meals, prayer, conversation, and other collective practices offer partial relief without necessarily taking recognisably oppositional form. The article argues that Paris is an urban setting in which bordering, ordering, and othering are continuously reproduced through everyday life.