Bornemann, Jonas and Francesco Maiani

Temporal Governance, Precarity in the New Pact on Migration and Asylum
2025

Temporal governance is a prominent trait of EU migration law. It involves deliberate strategies of control over migrants’ time to dissuade unauthorized behaviour. Although strategies of that nature are not new, they are at the heart of many of the changes introduced through the New Pact on Migration and Asylum. This research draws attention to mechanisms of temporal governance in the context of these recent reforms, arguing that individuals are thereby exposed to situations of protracted limbo, which can be singled out as one of the defining sources of migrants’ precarity. The New Pact consolidates and often aggravates this trend, subjecting individuals to situations in which they are stripped of control over their own time and fate. By examining the new rules on asylum procedures at the EU external borders and the reform of the Dublin system, this research explores the ways in which temporal governance affects the precarity of migrants.