Special isssue

The article focuses on the relationship of waiting and (im)mobility. I draw on a video installation by Adnan Softić and his team which puts the “Bibby Challenge” at its centre, an accommodation vessel reappropriated to temporarily house persons escaping the Yugoslav War in Hamburg, Germany. The video is characterised by an interplay of found footage material, sound production, off-commentary, and iconic images of boats. By analysing the audio-visual mediation of waiting, the article unfolds its ambivalent semantics of waiting. I argue that the video allows us to grapple with the politics of waiting and to critically address well-established assumptions about (im)mobility and migration. This holds for the experience of waiting, the history of migration movements, and the discourse about migration. Eventually, the video points to the shared logic of managing goods shipped worldwide and the “management” of migration by nation states. Following the hints towards logistical just-in-time organisation of world trade with its wish for well-synchronised flows, the video offers to unfold the logistic management of migration which seeks to smooth the so-called flow of persons by making them wait.