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Time and the Figure of the Citizen

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Abstract

This article reflects on the relationship between time and the figure of the citizen, where the citizen is understood in relational terms to the migrant. The article examines a stalled or interrupted flow of time that characterises the experience of certain migrants and citizens alike. This is time experienced as waiting for the fulfillment of citizenship. The article goes on to show how a progressive temporal narrative of citizenship-to-come obscures the effective denial of citizenship. While citizenship remains a key aspiration for those who lack its full or partial protections, it may not represent the ultimate horizon for struggles concerned with questions of border justice. With this proposition in mind, the article speculates on alternative horizons that may be emerging organically within struggles that refuse the citizen/migrant divide as a basis for imagining collective political futures.

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Notes

  1. Examples include Operation Streamline, introduced in Texas, Arizona and California to fast-track prosecutions of ‘illegal’ border crossings (Campbell 2018); fast-tracked status determination of asylum seekers in the Australia and the United Kingdom (Murray 2015); and French laws introduced in 2018 to reduce the time in which one is eligible for asylum from 11 to 6 months (Chater 2018).

  2. On the incompetence of Indigenous peoples as a rationale for the denial of citizenship, see for example, Slater (2019) and Volpp (2015).

  3. For example, in 2007, the Australian government created an exemption from the Federal Racial Discrimination Act in order to intervene in Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory, with measures including compulsory income management for welfare recipients, power to suspend elected councillors, and compulsory leases of Aboriginal lands, on the basis that child sexual abuse constituted an emergency that was beyond the capabilities of local levels of government and required federal intervention (Keenan 2013).

  4. See also analysis and campaigns for “expanded sanctuary” launched by Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI) at http://baji.org/, Undocublack Network at http://undocublack.org/, and Mijente at https://mijente.net/expanding-sanctuary/.

  5. See for example, the campaign launched in 2014, targeting asylum seekers considering journeys to Australia by boat with the slogan: “No Way: You will not make Australia home.” See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rT12WH4a92w

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Politics, New School for Social Research, New York, NY, USA

    Anne McNevin

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  1. Anne McNevin
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Correspondence to Anne McNevin.

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McNevin, A. Time and the Figure of the Citizen. Int J Polit Cult Soc 33, 545–559 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10767-020-09358-4

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