About time: Temporal control and illegality in Nashville, Tennessee

Abstract

This article examines how time creates immigrant il/legality. It centers on a young, undocumented immigrant who was stopped by police following a traffic violation and held in custody pending potential deportation. However, he was ultimately released due to previously filed legal claims. Through the case, I demonstrate how he, his lawyer, the police, and his everyday contacts advance or attempt to thwart his claims to legality through advancing different, and often moralized, notions of time. Specifically, I show how these actors tie legality to specific points in time, or periods of time, including age. A temporal focus reveals the flexibility of il/legality and how non-state actors-including undocumented immigrants themselves-wrest control over their lives and participate in defining the legal. The limits of temporal control, evidenced in the arbitrary nature of timing itself, also demonstrate the ultimate serendipity of legality.

Of cebras and citizens: Kinesthetic politics in Bolivia’s transport cities

“…Another kind of transubstantiation operates in Bolivia; city officials and residents frequently interpret the movement of both human bodies and vehicles as an incarnation of the values, character, and the spatial, racial, and class background of the driver. Such evaluations were present as my trufi driver fused the human and (auto)bodies 3 of the Micro and its driver, branding both “Alteños.” 4 We can see that fusing at work in other contexts, too, including in US traffic stops targeting minoritized populations (Boddie, 2010; Flores, 2023; Gilroy, 2001; Stuesse & Coleman, 2014). 5 Below, I extend this attention to the intersections of race, policing, and automobility beyond legal regimes of political membership and formal encounters with state authorities.…”

“…Chicago‐dwelling parents urging their Black child to behave in ways that do not draw unwanted attention enact their own form of “ontological coaching.” It may not provide meaningful protection from state or vigilante violence, but it nevertheless reveals the racialized parameters of belonging as different bodies move through city streets and are prevented from or punished for doing so (Ralph, 2020). So, too, when undocumented youth in Nashville coach each other on habits of driving, they not only aim to avoid traffic stops but also potential deportation—another intersection where legal and urban citizenship collide and potentially strip long‐term residents of their belonging in the United States (Flores, 2023). Both US examples highlight the mechanisms through which such movement is racialized and belonging is potentially denied, resulting in what Boddie (2010) terms “racial territoriality,” or the production and patrolling of some spaces as white.…”

“… 5 5 See Stuesse and Coleman (2014) and Flores (2023) on undocumented drivers in the US South. Paul Gilroy's (2001) account of “driving while Black” anticipated critiques of deadly traffic stops highlighted by the Black Lives Matter movement but also argued for understanding Black car ownership as a mode of resistance.…”