Call for contributions: 19th IMISCOE Conference

Exploring Chronopolitics: The Temporal Dimension of Migration Governance
Jurisdiction relates to time as much as it does to space. Time is essential in determining or identifying who counts as a migrant, and how, why and when this is the case. While time today is tacit knowledge for the migration scholar, it needs to come to the fore.

Time, in law, is not necessarily linear, same-paced or always measurable. It can go from frenzied time rushing out of control, to the limbo of suspended, stagnant time. It can even go in reversed mode. For many migrants, particularly those in the most insecure of states, these different faces of time can exist simultaneously, producing a sense of time that is particularly uncertain and untrusted. Bureaucratic procedures that migrants are confronted with have differentiated and sometimes contradictory tempos. Times of fast movement of crossings offset stasis in detention or waiting for money, favourable weather or tidal conditions. . Many migrants’ lives are marked by stasis, a suspension of time whilst the world around them continues forward, due to slowness of the law both in terms of their own status determination process and, in a later stage, the long wait for family reunification. The speed of legal processes are often considered problematic by those subject to them: those making asylum claims assigned to the ‘fast track’ can expect a decision within a matter of days, leaving very little time for any claim for international protection to be satisfactory investigated.

We welcome contributions aiming to understand the ways in which time is used in migration law and policy. With the aim to create a multidisciplinary dialogue exploring time in relation to migration governance, possibly in view of editing the texts ensuing from the workshop for a special issue, we are open to all contributions that fall within the overarching theme of the workshop. We particularly welcome abstracts pertaining to the following sub-themes:

• How we employ and regulate time in relation to migration governance
• Effects of time on the (quality of) the law
• Consequences of the chronopolitics of migration on the constitutional settlement
• Political ‘othering’ through use of time-caps, deadlines, waiting periods and other time-related practices
• Philosophical and historical perspectives on the chronopolitics of migration
• Practices that employ time as a proxy for hard-to-measure qualitative features (e.g. integration, competence, authority etc.)

Please send your expression of interest, a proposed title and short abstract to patricia.mindus@filosofi.uu.se and/or Rebecca.stern@jur.uu.se by Friday 10th December 2021.