Stacking as a strategy — Bureaucracktic Bedtime Stories

“Stacking as a strategy” is a statement my sister made as we were having a discussion on how the bureaucratic apparatus in Belgium impacts people who are considered as ‘foreigners.’ As a lawyer in Foreigners’ law, she sees the stacking as a strategy because it is a way of adding bureaucratic procedures onto bureaucratic procedures to people who are already in precarious situation. According to her, it is unclear where this tendency comes from. Whether it’s a fully conscious and intended practice from administrations and/or their workers or not, it does affect the ones having to face that system. It is interesting to see that procedures sometimes do not even follow the law; so the bureaucratic apparatus that is supposedly unmovable because of a stiffness inherited from rules and laws can sometimes bend under an undetermined pressure. After that discussion, I wrote a poem on this accumulation of strange uncountable matter that is sometimes inflexible and other times fluid. Here I’ve put this poem in discussion with my sister’s words from our discussion.

Stacks, layers, strata; aggregation of matter. Seemingly unmovable.
There used to be a provision in the general Law on the right to stay stating that foreigners’ children would inherit their parents’ rights.
A special instrument might be necessary in order to perforate its deep crust. From one angle.
Now, this provision is deleted from the law. Consequently, certain administrations have started to change their procedures.
Another instrument extracts the matter. But if you find the good angle tho.
In certain administration, and this is apparently spreading, there’s no inheritance of rights anymore. Consequently a procedure of inheritance must be started
It renders up the stacking Not especially close nor far
This is not an overtly complicated procedure but it’s an addition of procedures for people who are already dealing a lot with administrations from a very vulnerable position.
It's difficult to count anything. Some things are moving.
Because of this legal grey area, there’s more space given for administrations to decide on how to proceed.
As the limits are not very clear. Tiny elements whirling among hardness.
There is a clear tendency to complicate things for people who are ‘foreigners’ even if they are legally staying in the country.
It's dense and living Slowly growing.