I broke down the instant the person at the post office gave me the slip containing the date when I could go to the police station to submit all the data required to have my stay permit renewed. It will be in April next year. My sentence had been delivered. Eight months in limbo. The distance between my body and its homes back home seemed suddenly immeasurable. I felt in danger of being forgotten by all my loved ones, not out of choice, but because that is how it is when you do not confront the materiality of someone’s existence regularly. There is this threat of inevitably vanishing from their consciousness. I was not alone in my quandary. My Pakistani friend was also given a date eight months from now. This is simply how it is when you are an immigrant in Italy. The choice is simple, the Italian State believes, if you miss home so badly, go back. If you want to live here, you must play this waiting game while respecting the opaqueness of borders. Cross them at your peril. 

That a person can be illegal is one of the worst outcomes of nation-state ordering systems. You live the contradiction of being in a globalised world in which you are denied mobility and cannot participate, because your passport is not the right colour.