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.