In June 2022, amid Sri Lanka's economic crisis, passport applicants formed a queue outside the Department of Immigration and Emigration headquarters in Battaramulla, near Colombo. Reuters reported that R.M.R. Lenora, hoping to find work abroad, waited there for two days. The country issued 288,645 passports in the first five months of 2022, up from 91,331 in the same period a year earlier.
People in the same line did not necessarily share the same destination. Work, study and family visits could all begin with the same booklet. The queue was not a single story of people leaving a country, but a collection of individuals trying to keep future choices open.