Immigration, policing, and the politics of time

This article argues for time and temporality as a critical dimension in the dialectical articulation of im/migration struggles. To make this case, the article draws on an emerging body of interdisciplinary scholarship on the temporal dimensions of im/migration and of im/migration policing. It then uses this framework to explore a host of anti‐im/migrant initiatives currently unfolding in North America under the geopolitical leadership of Donald J. Trump. Contextualizing these initiatives within a longer genealogy of im/migration and im/migration policing across the continent, the article affirms scholarly characterizations of im/migrants' desires and aspirations as a “creative force” that “structurally exceed” border controls ( The contested politics of mobility: Borderzones and irregularity ); but it also argues a need for greater scholarly attention to how the violence associated with im/migration policing generates nonlinear im/migration dynamics and recursive pressures on nation‐state borders and their police apparatus over the long durée. The article concludes by considering the theoretical, political, and empirical stakes of a conceptual shift in emphasis from space to time in the study of im/migration and im/migration policing, and then offers several concrete suggestions for further inquiry.