This article is structured around snapshots of everyday life in reception centres for asylum seekers. These set the tone of the sonic and affective dimensions of the experience of the centre, as narrated by a resident, a music teacher, and through ethnographic reflections. The article devises ‘voice’ as a distinct category of the sonic spectrum, imbued with the significance of testifying to human existence, in a twofold way: first as a theoretical lens that offers new perspectives on the asylum seekers’ paradigm, and second, as a methodological tool to gain insights into aspects of everyday life in a reception centre, and by extension gaining access into ‘other’ social worlds that would otherwise remain concealed.
