Temporality in Mobile Lives: Contemporary Asia-Australia Migration and Everyday Time

This innovative study of young Asian migrants’ lives in Australia sheds new light on the complex relationship between migration and time. With in-depth interviews and a new conceptual framework, Robertson reveals how migration influences the trajectories of migrants’ lives, from career pathways to intimate relationships.

Robertson provides fresh perspectives on the 21st century migratory experience in this innovative study of young Asian migrants’ lives in Australia. Exploring the aspirations and realities of transnational mobility, the book shows how migration has reshaped lived experiences of time for middle-class young people moving between Asia and the West for work, study and lifestyle opportunities. Through a new conceptual framework of ‘chronomobilities,’ which looks at ‘time regimes’ and ‘time logics’, it demonstrates how migratory pathways have become far more complex than leaving one country for another, and can profoundly affect the temporalities of everyday life, from career pathways to intimate relationships. Drawing on extensive ethnographic material, Robertson deepens our understanding of the multifaceted relationship between migration and time.