The defining condition of being a refugee is waiting. Some people wait in order to leave—they wait for papers, for the opportunity, or for the sum of money they need to save. Others leave in a hurry, with bags packed overnight or not at all. But, after leaving, everyone waits: to be processed as a refugee, to be allowed entry, to be granted asylum. Ireland has created a system that boils the process of seeking asylum down to its essence: waiting.

I recently travelled to Ireland to interview people living in this system, which is called Direct Provision. (One of the first things I learned is that migrant advocates prefer to say “person in need of international protection” rather than “asylum seeker.” This usage, which hasn’t yet migrated to the United States, emphasizes that people are claiming what is theirs by international law, as opposed to asking a national government for a handout. It also foregrounds personhood.) There are worse places than Ireland to be a person in need of international protection. The U.S. is one such place. In this country, people are routinely incarcerated in so-called detention centers. People who come across the southern border are now sent to Mexico while their cases are processed in the U.S., a situation that is frightening and perilous for many. Unlike other Western nations, the U.S. does not grant people in need of international protection any public assistance, nor are those people immediately allowed to work. Ireland grants people in need of international protection shelter, food, and public assistance, as do many other countries, including Canada and a number of Western European states. But Ireland, in effect, does not allow them to live in the community. It has created a system that is perhaps unique in its daily cruelty, and that has sparked a vocal movement for its dismantlement.

Direct Provision is a system of “accommodation centers” that are run by for-profit hospitality and catering companies under contract with the Irish government. Established in 1999, in response to what was, for Ireland, a high number of asylum applications—more than seven thousand that year, and more than ten thousand the following year—Direct Provision is exactly what its name indicates: a system for providing aid to people directly, in the form of room and board. In most European countries, people in need of international protection receive financial assistance, so that they can live in that country while their application is pending; along the way, they learn the language and the ways of the country. Under Direct Provision, however, asylum seekers live with other asylum seekers, in accommodation centers to which they happen to be assigned. Every center has a different past: a former convent in Waterford; a compound of tiny coastal row houses outside of Dublin; a former student dormitory in central Dublin; a trailer park in the Midlands; two former mid-level hotels in touristy Galway, on the western coast; more ambitious hotels from the Celtic Tiger era, both on the coast and in the Midlands. Some centers house only men, some only women, some whole families, and some a mix of two or more categories. The largest center houses nearly six hundred people, the smallest fewer than a hundred.

A person who declares an intention to seek protection—either by addressing an immigration officer at an airport or by contacting authorities inside Ireland—is given an initial questionnaire to fill out, and is then fingerprinted, photographed, and, at the end of a long bureaucratic day, sent to what’s called a reception center. Usually it’s Balseskin, a purpose-built dormitory in an outer suburb of Dublin. People spend several days here, or a couple of weeks, or, in rare cases, several months, before being moved to more permanent shelters. There is no orientation session; the waiting just commences. “I didn’t know anything about Direct Provision,” Delroy Mpofu, who is twenty-nine and fled Zimbabwe about two years ago, told me. He observed that most people left the reception center after two weeks. “They just work whichever way—some days they move a hundred people, some days they move twenty.” Mpofu himself appeared to be stuck there, and no one told him why; it may have been because he is transgender and the Reception and Integration Agency, which administers the system, was looking for a place where he wouldn’t have to share a room with anyone. “At first, I was making lots of friends,” Mpofu said. But days later the new friends would be gone. “At the end, I was, like, I’m not going to keep hurting myself.” He started keeping to himself.

Mpofu’s stay at Balseskin lasted eleven months. “I wasn’t checking the transfer list anymore,” he said; after months of consulting it every day, waiting to see his name, he gave up. In Direct Provision, everything, it seems, is communicated through posted signs. Signs remind parents to check whether they have their children with them as they pass through a door. Signs tell residents that their hair is not to be done in the common space, except on Saturdays. Signs remind visitors to sign in, and they designate which areas are restricted to residents (generally speaking, everything but the common room). And, of course, signs tell residents when they are about to move. “That day, I was going to change my linen,” Mpofu said. He was taking his sheets to reception to exchange for a fresh set when he was told, in an actual human voice, “Delroy, finally, you are getting your transfer.” He packed overnight and in the morning boarded a bus that delivered him, three other adults, and two children to Mosney, a flat seaside expanse of tiny houses. Once a popular holiday destination, Mosney, which used to contain an amusement park, fell into disrepair by the end of the past century. Now some six hundred people in need of international protection live in its little row houses. There is a food store and a medical center. Once a month, the accommodation center runs a bus to Dublin, about thirty miles away. Other days, it’s a journey that takes a couple of hours by public transportation. Still, Mpofu said, “You are lucky to come to Mosney. It’s considered the best center. The fact that you cook for yourself and you have a bit of privacy, even though there are still people who share. It’s a bit close to Dublin.” Accommodation assignments are apparently random: you may end up in a city, in a one-street village, or several miles from one.

Hatch Hall is a Direct Provision center in Dublin. There is a plan to turn it into a five-star hotel, and it’s not hard to see why: the hundred-year-old building is a faux castle, with turrets with oxidized-copper spires, precious gables over attic windows, soaring ceilings, and a location in the city center. For decades, it was a residence hall for University College students. Now it is rundown, overcrowded, and filled with waiting. An activist, whom I’ll call Mona, is a resident of Hatch Hall. Her advocacy for small things has reshaped the lives of many of the residents there.

Mona and her daughter share a room, nearly all of which is taken up by a giant bed. The first impression of the room is one of excess: the very large bed connotes leisure. But leisure is really a finite amount of time free of work and other obligations—that’s what makes it restful. People in Direct Provision have the opposite of leisure: time unbounded, time that envelops them like a cloud and sinks them like a swamp. This is the time spent waiting. Mona had her all-important first real interview with an immigration official in September, 2017, fourteen months after arriving in Ireland. She still hasn’t heard about any decision based on that interview. Other people in Hatch Hall have come and gone, arriving, interviewing, and receiving status within a couple of years, or even a few months. “It’s devastating,” Mona said, about the process being so opaque and unpredictable. “My prayer is just to have my status.”