Everything Everywhere All at Once – From Migration as Sequence to Migration as Simultaneity

Abstract

This Article investigates how law conceptualizes the temporality of migration, exposing a mismatch between the legal framework and migrants’ lived experiences. It shows that the dominant mode, which views migration as a sequential process, fails to capture the realities of migration. The Article argues that both epistemic and human rights arguments call for remedying this mismatch. In response, it introduces migration as simultaneity, which better reflects migrants’ experiences and the interplay between space, place, and time in migration and belonging.

The argument proceeds in three stages. First, it examines migration as a sequence, the prevailing concept embedded in international, European, and domestic migration and citizenship laws. This sequential framework operates through linearity and temporariness, which function as primary mechanisms for governing inclusion and exclusion. Second, drawing on migration studies and anthropology, it critiques this model, showing its inability to account for how migrants perceive and experience migration and belonging. Finally, it argues that strong power asymmetries shaping the regulation of migration demand a temporal conception that better aligns with migrants’ lived experiences. To this end, it advances migration as simultaneity and suggests that this concept can inform legal frameworks regulating migration and belonging.