How do migration and time intersect? Waiting and uncertainty, postponing and changing life-stage circumstances, are relevant to many migration decision making processes and experiences.
The intersections of time and migration have seen an upsurge in research interest in recent years. Key areas of research include the intersections of time, space and migration (Mavroudi et al 2017), as well as time in migrants' encounters with state's asylum systems, detention, uncertainty and precarious statuses (De Genoa 2002; Griffith 2014). The notion of 'waiting' (Brun 2015; Hage 2009), whether for asylum decisions or other aspects, constitutes a research area across contexts and stages of the migration journey. Migration and time has also been explored in relation to shifting temporal perspectives on migration (and return) projects, how migration as a possibility intersects within time and life stage transitions, and in the context of sustained transnational ties. Meanwhile, other intersections of migration and time have yet to be further explored. These include the temporalities of highly skilled migrants (including refugees) trajectories and time as a key aspect of integration processes, to mention but a few.
In this session, we welcome contributions which continue to build on this emergent work, and simultaneously encourage other angles, empirical foci, and intersections of time and migration, as these appear in contexts across the Globe, as well as in Europe.
We would like to encourage an explicit engagement with time in relation to migration, but one where time is broadly conceived of, inspired by Adam 1994: 13: "We can grasp time in its complexity only if we seek the relations between time, temporality, tempo and timing, between clock time, chronology, social time and time-consciousness, between motion, process, change, continuity and the temporal modalities of past, present and future, between time as resource, as ordering principle and as becoming of the possible, or between any combination of these." We also encourage a processual approach to migration, from aspirations to migrate, throughout migration journeys, in contact with migration management and border controls, in relation to settlement processes (whether regularized or not), in relation to prospective returns, or onward mobilities, and with regard to more or less sustained transnational mobilities and ties.
We invite abstracts which engage explicitly with time and migration, and build on original empirical material, and/or offer innovative theoretical and methodological contributions. Contributions might foreground perspectives and roles of migrants' or their significant others, of state institutions or non-governmental actors, of social structures and geography, as well as cultural and religious dimensions.
Topics of contributions could include, but are not limited to:
* Migrants' experiences and perceptions of time (e.g. bureaucratic time, transnational time, national time, religious time)
* Retrospective and prospective reflections on time and aspects of migration, e.g. postponing
* Historical analysis foregrounding temporalities of migration
* Time and timing in the politics (and public debate) of immigration (control)
* Time and agency
* Temporalities of high skilled (refugee) migration
* Time and integration
Session organizers: Susanne Bygnes (UiB) and Marta Bivand Erdal (PRIO)
We invite interested researchers to submit a 250 word abstract, please include your name, title and affiliation, by 8 December to Susanne.bygnes@uib.no<mailto:Susanne.bygnes@uib.no>
Confirmation of acceptance or not will be circulated by December 12.
