The Emergence of the ‘Duldung Light’: Managing Deportability, Sanctioning Illegibility

Over the past several decades, immigration authorities in Germany have framed ‘unclarified identity’ as a problem, calling for increasingly complicated methodologies to make migrant bodies legible to state deportation efforts. These efforts include technical devices and information infrastructures, such as fingerprint scanners or databases, but also specific administrative logics, such as the in-between status of the Duldung Light ‘for persons without a clarified identity’, a suspended deportation status that pressures individuals to attend embassy hearings or reveal their identity documents by imposing sanctions such as a ban from employment and a severe reduction of social benefits. This article traces the emergence of the Duldung Light and explores the political function of connected forms of state sanctioning, some aimed at controlling larger movements by discouraging migration, others aimed at pressuring individuals to perform nationality. The findings additionally point to at times contradictory logics within state efforts to produce and manage deportability.