MOBILE – Mobility Law Open Lab with Rebecca Thorburn Stern

Time, temporality and migrant children

Guest presenter: Rebecca Thorburn Stern is a Professor of Public International Law at the Department of Law, Uppsala University, Sweden. She serves as the Research Director of the Uppsala Forum for Democracy, Peace and Justice. Her primary research interests encompass asylum and migration law, the human rights of children, and the interaction between international and national law. She authored Implementing Article 12 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child: Participation, Power, and Attitudes (Brill Nijhoff, 2017) and has written several articles and book chapters on asylum/migration law and children’s rights. Among her ongoing research projects, notable examples include the multidisciplinary project Nordasil and the CARES project (on SOGIE asylum seekers). Thorburn Stern recently (in collaboration with Patricia Mindus from Uppsala University) was awarded a Swedish Research Council Grant of 4.9 million SEK for the research project "Status and Stability: An Examination of the Importance of Time in Swedish Asylum and Citizenship Legislation."

Presentation: Time and its uses are of particular interest in the context of international and national migration law, as time arguably is one of the most important governmental techniques to regulate migration. Griffiths has coined the term "temporal governance" for the diverse manifestations of the role of time in governing migration (Griffiths 2017). Indeed, power operates as much through temporal devices as it does through spatial control. One example is the increased temporality of international protection: temporary protection for certain categories, temporary residence permits as opposed to permanent residence permits, cessation and revocation of protection status is now the main rule in many countries. Clearly, also, there is a multitude of conceptions of time at work in the regulation of migration. The "temporal border" (Tazzioli 2018), for example, adds to the physical border a sense of existential immobility. Temporality can be found in the legal techniques to differentiate between categories of migrants. Differentiations can be made in procedures by accelerating or decelerating the procedures for certain categories of migrants with the effect that some have to wait a long time, while others receive their entitlements immediately (Reneman & Stronks 2021). 

In recent years, time and temporality has emerged as a new research domain in migration law, exploring the implications and roles of time and temporal methods in the context of migration (e.g. Durieux 2014, Ineli-Ciger 2018, Reneman & Stronks 2021, Stronks 2022). Until now, however, there has been limited focus on how temporal barriers and strategies embedded in legislation distinctly affect children and adults. It is widely recognized that children, within the context of migration, may experience a dual vulnerability due to their status as both children and migrants (CRC Committee 2017), and legal instruments and soft law guidelines on migration at both national and regional levels often incorporate special safeguards for children. Regulations and policies applicable to all migrants, irrespective of age, may however have adverse consequences for children that go insufficiently recognised. The use of temporal devices to control migration serves as a case in point. These devices encompass waiting periods for family reunification, qualification durations for permanent residence permits, and accelerated or prolonged asylum procedures – measures that often apply without regard to the age of the individual concerned. When deploying such tools, the state frequently neglects to acknowledge that the passage of time affects adults and children differently, especially regarding its influence on an individual's classification as either a 'child' or an 'adult'. The paper aims to, drawing from discussions about the assessment of child asylum claims, seeks to explore the implications of time as a mechanism to regulate migration on children vis-à-vis adults. It also aims to discuss whether the effects of such instruments, when uniformly applied to both demographics, might yield adverse consequences on children to the extent that it constitutes an indirect, non-legitimate age-based differential treatment.

Time: 14 March 2024 13:00-14:15

Place: MOBILE – 6B-2-22 Southern Campus + ONLINE

Online participation

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