| Summary: | In migration law, power asymmetry is often hidden in seemingly neutral policies where clock and calendar time enact temporal boundaries such as dates, lengths of time and chronological age, which are used for border control. In Sweden, some 8,000 youths who received deportation orders when the government introduced harsher asylum policies in 2016 were given a 'second chance' to qualify for permanent residency under the Upper Secondary School Act in 2018. To avoid deportation, they had to complete upper-secondary education and find a job within six months of graduation. In this article, I examine how the temporal governance of borders functions when migration law intersects and clashes with different legal, institutional and individual temporal boundaries and rhythms. By interviewing welfare workers who had the power to affect whether these youths would be granted residency or be deported and by analysing the use of clock time in case-law, I show how temporal boundaries can be negotiated at these intersections, while also unmasking the unpredictability of law that dictates possibilities to negotiate time. The effects of temporal intersections should be viewed as integral to the function of law and the use of clock time as a tool for border control.
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