The temporal architecture of labour migration: identity, (Il)legality, and the local governance of Myanmar border pass holders
5
Issued Date
2025-12-01
Resource Type
eISSN
2214594X
Scopus ID
2-s2.0-105026298410
Journal Title
Comparative Migration Studies
Volume
13
Issue
1
Rights Holder(s)
SCOPUS
Bibliographic Citation
Comparative Migration Studies Vol.13 No.1 (2025)
Suggested Citation
Zhu T., Meyer M. The temporal architecture of labour migration: identity, (Il)legality, and the local governance of Myanmar border pass holders. Comparative Migration Studies Vol.13 No.1 (2025). doi:10.1186/s40878-025-00513-4 Retrieved from: https://repository.li.mahidol.ac.th/handle/123456789/113979
Title
The temporal architecture of labour migration: identity, (Il)legality, and the local governance of Myanmar border pass holders
Author's Affiliation
Corresponding Author(s)
Other Contributor(s)
Abstract
Migrants traverse not only territorial spaces but also territorialising temporalities. Both migrants and state actors deploy temporal strategies to shape migrants’ relationships to bounded places, underscoring the need for deeper theoretical and empirical attention to migration’s temporal dimension. From this perspective, immigrant identity politics mediates the relationship between migrants’ time and the historical temporalities of host territories, reconfiguring socio-economic and political boundaries between immigrants and citizens. This article examines the temporal politics of local governance in Myanmar–China migration, focusing on a Chinese border city. It proposes a tripartite analytical model—policy horizons, value regimes, and immigration infrastructure—to reveal how time structures immigrant–citizen distinctions. Central to this dynamic is the juridical limbo surrounding Myanmar migrants’ ambiguous (il)legality, which fuels policy uncertainty, institutional fragmentation, and weak commitment to immigrant incorporation. Consequently, local governance prioritises flexible, temporary immigration, sustaining discriminatory wage-labour regimes and underdeveloped facilitation infrastructure. This temporalising marginalisation renders Myanmar immigrants’ presence non-reproductive of local socio-political life. While acknowledging the positive reciprocity between temporary immigration and local economic development, the article calls for institutional interventions that resolve the juridical limbo to enable a more inclusive and resilient governance framework. Such a framework would entail: (1) a historically grounded policy horizon; (2) fair and competitive wage-labour arrangements; and (3) robust institutional infrastructure integrating immigrant incorporation as a core function. Achieving this requires coordinated action across functional agencies and administrative scales, for synchronising immigrants’ individual temporalities with the territorialised chronologies of the host society. Clinical trial number Not applicable.