Borders of Time: The temporalities of academic mobility

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. They experience a range of insecurities to do with their immigration status. This includes, but is not limited to, the waiting and processing times associated with immigration rules and visa requirements, which could temporarily suspend mobility rights. The notion of a temporal border is enacted to explore the insecurities 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 fully cross borders