Reframing Migration Temporalities: Rhythms and Bursts In Mobile Biographies, Families, and Societies In Turbulent Times

In an era shaped by polycrisis and rapid geopolitical shifts, conventional frameworks for understanding spatial movement fall short of capturing its increasingly complex temporal dynamics. This session advances a critical perspective in migration studies by interrogating both regular and unexpected temporalities of mobility. We argue that relatively predictable rhythms of migration - cyclical patterns, policy-driven mobilities, and transnational labour migration - are deeply intertwined with sudden mobility bursts, understood as accelerated, chaotic, and often unexpected movements triggered by unsettling events and broader global crises. By examining the interplay between rhythm and rupture, this session seeks to rethink how we conceptualize time across three interconnected scales:

• Macro (societal) level: We explore how temporal frameworks of transnational mobility are maintained, reconfigured, or disrupted by crises, conflict, and shifting border regimes, reshaping expectations around migration flows across states, regions, and global systems.
• Meso (familial) level: We focus on changing temporalities within family migration strategies. While traditional migration decision-making often followed gendered and generational patterns, these are increasingly fluid. We welcome research on shifting family dynamics in relation to feminization of migration, reunification, and care arrangements.
• Micro (individual) level: Drawing on a life-course perspective, we approach migration as embedded in biographical time. We invite contributions on how mobility accelerates, delays, or reconfigures life transitions, and how early mobility experiences shape later trajectories.

Across these levels, we welcome theoretical, methodological, and empirical contributions that address diverse temporal phenomena, including acceleration and deceleration, repetition and recursion, multidirectional trajectories, and the ways turbulent times reshape migration pathways.