In European migration law making migrants wait has become an important governmental strategy. Such waiting can lead to temporal harm, as a result of the loss of human time and impaired temporal autonomy. Waiting itself is not harmful, it is a ubiquitous aspect of modern life, as human beings are always waiting for their futures. Only when waiting becomes existential, when one is stuck in the present and loses the ability to move forward in time, it becomes temporal harm. Lost time in waiting is irreplecable, because of the finitude of human time and impaired temporal autonomy can lead to physical and psychological harm. This temporal harm oftentimes remains invisible, due to the dominance of clock and calendar time in our conception of temporal justice. Temporal harm should thus be prevented, for it cannot be repaired.
How Migration Law Creates Temporal Harm