Policing time – creating labour: the temporal control of the unemployed

Abstract

ABSTRACT Taking as a point of departure the experience of unemployed women in the municipality of Malmö, Sweden, this article identifies the continuity between the policing of time in the migration complex and the unemployment complex. It explores three forms of temporal border policing: placing people on hold (waiting time), placing people in line (labour time), and placing people out of line (disposable time). By focusing on these three forms of policing unemployed people’s time, the article illuminates and analyses the contours of a gendered and racial temporality that creates a flexible, patient and disposable female and racialized workforce. It shows how processes of gendered racialization are those of time disposition and robbery, of time control and time waste, where racialized women’s time is in different ways less valued and less visible. The article illustrates the unequal gendered and racial time regime that is shaped through temporal border practices in the Swedish unemployment complex.