Migration has long been considered primarily a spatial phenomenon (Griffiths et al 2013). Its temporal dimensions have typically been explored rather implicitly, focused primarily on life course and generational perspectives. The advent of the temporal turn in the social sciences has brought more focused analytical attention to a variety and complexity of temporal aspects related to migration. While studies of privileged migrants have called for an attention to temporal openness and eventfulness of migration (Collins and Shubin 2015), research with irregular and precarious migrants has drawn attention to how the ‘staggered’ aspect of their mobility means that it is saturated with transitions and ambiguities of temporariness and permanence (Robertson 2018). Research on migration trajectories and journeys has thus questioned the linearity of migration (Schapendonk 2017), imagined not only by scholars but also often migrants (Amrith 2020), examining different rhythms and cadences of movement, waiting and stuck-ness. Increasing attention has also been paid to specifically capitalism-shaped relationship between migration and time (Barber and Lem 2018), allowing for analyses of the ways by which precarious migrants navigate a variety of interrelated and differently time-scaled processes (Axelsson et al 2017). As Chacko and Price (2020) contend in a recent special issue, cities are instrumental to the production of precarity-related permanent temporariness.
Simultaneously, recent decades have witnessed a surge of interest in questions of time and temporality among urban scholars. From the politics of waiting and stillness among urban migrants to the establishment of temporal border regimes in arrival cities and the conflicting rhythms of gentrifying and diversifying neighborhoods (Kern 2016; Sanyal 2018; Tazzioli 2018), the context-dependent construction of time and temporality now features prominently across the urban disciplines.
This session seeks to bring together the temporal turn (Mavroudi et al 2017; Barber and Lem 2018; Donnan et al 2017; Baas and Yeoh 2018) and the urban turn in migration studies. We invite papers that address a variety of temporal relations between migrants/migration and the urban, including:
- Temporal aspects in urban migration and diversity-related policies
- Temporal dimensions of urban encounters
- Neighborhood rhythms and migrant (un)belonging
- Migrant negotiation of intersecting or competing temporal frames
- Temporalities of migrant urban citizenship
- Urban economies, time and migrant workers in the city
- The 24/7 city, night-time economy, and migration
- Temporalities of the pandemic and migrants or migrant(-serving) organizations
- Temporal urban borders and migrants
Please send your 250-word abstract to