Borders of time: the temporalities of academic mobility

ABSTRACT

This article challenges the claim that highly skilled international academics who have obtained advanced degrees and transnational identities are offered almost seamless mobility. The state border or territory is not the only line that highly skilled academics must cross as international subjects of mobility. Their high academic status is reduced to a precariat and confronted with epistemic injustices due to their immigration status. These include, but are not limited to, the waiting and processing times associated with immigration rules and visa requirements, which could also temporarily suspend mobility rights. The notion of a temporal border is enacted to explore the “time-bound” realities that highly skilled academics face. Border crossing for highly skilled migrants is not just a matter of entry passing through territorial lines of nation-states. The border has a “thickness” that stretches through time. Simply put, it takes time to cross borders.

KEYWORDS:

• Academic mobility
• highly skilled migrants
• temporality
• time
• border
• epistemic justice
• differential inclusion

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.