Stuck between borders: The power of bureaucratic ambiguity

Guest post by Rameen Naseem. Rameen is a master’s student in Media and Communication at the University of Wollongong in Dubai. Her research focuses on mobility inequality, border regimes, and the lived experiences of Global South travellers, using autoethnography to explore the emotional and psychological dimensions of border control.

I handed our passports to the immigration officer. We exchanged a smile. He checked the documents, frowned, checked his system again, and asked us to step aside. 

“Something is wrong with your visas,” he said. He couldn't explain what. 

This was at the Saudi immigration checkpoint on the Bahrain-Saudi border. My family and I are from Pakistan and are UAE residents. In 2023, we planned a road trip from Dubai to Saudi Arabia, to perform Umrah in Makkah, before continuing on to Bahrain, where we spent a few days in Manama.

Driving back from Bahrain, we needed to re-enter Saudi Arabia. Exiting Bahrain was straightforward. It was at the Saudi immigration checkpoint that officials told us something was wrong with our visas.

We were confused but not yet worried. Officials rechecked our documents. Everything seemed valid. Still, the system would not grant us entry. “A technical issue,” they said. We returned the next morning, hoping a new day would bring clarity. It didn't. The same problem appeared, unchanged and unexplained.

At the Saudi embassy in Manama, they told us nothing was wrong. The visas were valid. Reassured, we returned to the border only to face the same refusal.

Over the next few days, we moved between the border and Manama, trying everything we could. I called helplines, revisited offices, and repeated our explanations. Each time, the answer remained the same: something was wrong, but no one could say what. The process offered no clarity, no timeline, and no resolution.

My experience at the border was shaped by uncertainty and bureaucratic ambiguity – a relatively soft form of control compared to the far harsher conditions many others encounter at border crossings. My family and I were eventually able to make our way home via another route, an option totally out of reach for many. Meanwhile, stateless individuals are unable to cross between these borders, experiencing indefinite containment, while others are detained in severe conditions for months on end. 

Scholars such as Nicholas De Genova have argued that borders operate not only through physical exclusion but also through prolonged waiting, uncertainty, and the production of “deportable” subjects. In this context, my experience was not characterised by physical harm, but it revealed how bureaucratic opacity functions alongside more visible and violent forms of border violence, sometimes immobilising people through ambiguity, sometimes through containment. Both forms of control reveal how border systems distribute vulnerability differently depending on who they are and how the state has decided to value them.

A week in limbo

I remember sitting on the carpeted floor of a mosque near the Bahrain border, exhausted and overwhelmed after days spent trying to cross. It felt surreal, surrounded by the quiet calm of a sacred space while panic consumed me. Other worshippers moved through their prayers peacefully. After a week of moving back and forth between the border and the city, I applied for new visas for all five of us, hoping this would finally resolve the issue. Because of our UAE residency, the approvals came within hours. It seemed like we had found a way forward.

We returned to the border once more. I handed over the new visas, expecting a different outcome. The officer looked at them and said they would not work. The previous visas, he explained, were still active, and until they expired, the new ones were invalid.

Here was a system which operated without needing to justify itself. There was no law I had broken; no explicit rule I could challenge. The power didn't come through force or clear prohibition. It came through opacity itself. By refusing to give an explanation, the system forced me to regulate myself to monitor my documents, to question my legitimacy, to internalise the suspicion.

Eventually, we had no choice but to abandon the remainder of our trip. My family flew back to Dubai, skipping the crossing to Saudi Arabia altogether – a privilege that would be unattainable to many others in our position.

Looking back on the incident several years later, I have tried to identify what might have triggered the refusal. Our visas were valid, issued only weeks earlier with multiple-entry permission, and we had already entered Saudi Arabia once with the same visa without difficulty. Other travellers appeared to pass through without issue, suggesting this restriction was not being broadly applied that day. 

Throughout the process, officials repeatedly suggested that an unidentified error in the system was preventing our entry. However, they could not explain the nature of the error, resolve it, or tell us why it appeared. I found no evidence that Umrah visa conditions, or cross-border vehicle regulations – both of which are regularly changed by Saudi Arabia – could account for our refusal. Each possible explanation I considered fell short.

In retrospect, the incident may have resulted from a technical or administrative error. Neither possibility was ever confirmed. No mechanism existed to formally challenge the decision, and no written record was issued. What remained was a form of power exercised through opacity: a decision that affected movement profoundly while offering no clear basis for appeal or understanding. Yet even if the cause was a technical error, the effect was the same: a system that immobilises without explanation is exercising control regardless of intent.

Uncertainty as a form of border control

What Khosravi describes as “immobilisation” is often associated with detention or deportation – tangible restrictions on movement. But borders can also immobilise through opacity and arbitrariness. In my case, there were no deportation or detention orders, no walls or confinement, and no explicit denial. Yet we were unable to move.

As Michel Foucault suggests, power does not always operate through force; it works by shaping how individuals behave. In situations like this, uncertainty becomes a mechanism of control. When rules are unclear and decisions unexplained, individuals are left to anticipate, adjust, and regulate themselves.

This experience of uncertainty changed how I approach travel. I have become hyper-vigilant about documentation. Before every trip, I check visas multiple times, looking for errors that don’t exist. I have learned to anticipate suspicion before it arrives. The system successfully made its way inside me. I was no longer just restricted by borders; I was restricting myself, managing my own behaviour in anticipation of control. 

This is how power operates most effectively: when it remains invisible. A wall is obvious; you can see it and try to resist it. But a system that withholds information and refuses to explain operates through ambiguity. That ambiguity becomes internalised. You carry it with you. The system no longer needs to police you if you are already policing yourself.

While my experience was temporary, it offered a glimpse into the broader realities faced by those who encounter far more severe forms of border control. For many, the uncertainty I experienced during a single journey becomes an enduring condition, with consequences that extend far beyond interrupted travel into the suspension of safety, mobility, and belonging.

In the end, borders do not always need walls. Sometimes, ambiguity is enough.

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