Title: Advancing a family perspective in the temporal governance of migration

Authors: Hilda Gustafsson

Addresses: Malmö Institute for Migration Studies (MIM), Department of Global Political Studies, Malmö University, Sweden

Abstract: Within the expanding scholarship on time in migration governance, its relational dimension, particularly concerning family ties, remains underexplored. This theoretical article applies the concept of chrononormativity to bridge this gap, advancing a family-centred approach to temporal governance. Defined as the social and institutional regulation of time that normalises certain life trajectories, chrononormativity reorients analyses in which the family is either absent or reduced to a descriptive unit toward a focus on the linkages between migration regimes, family members, and the life course. In doing so, the concept foregrounds temporal governance as relational and normative, demonstrating how families negotiate and adapt to the life course ideals and temporalities of the migration regime and to those of other family members. The article thus provides key insights into temporal governance more broadly, its implications for the legal, emotional, and temporal entanglements of family life, and the unequal distribution of temporal autonomy under selective migration regimes.

Keywords: family migration; temporal governance; temporal turn; temporality; chrononormativity; transnational families; chronopolitics; migration governance; temporal borders.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMBS.2026.154311

International Journal of Migration and Border Studies, 2026 Vol.9 No.1, pp.66 - 85

Received: 28 Aug 2025
Accepted: 12 Mar 2026
Published online: 19 Jun 2026 *

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