Why do international space and progressive time continue to be taken as the given foundations for the conditions under which mobility can be governed? Despite a long-standing critique of prevailing geopolitical and chronopolitical assumptions, these space–time parameters exhibit extraordinary tenacity. This article grapples with the reasons why. It also asks what it would it take to imagine a future in which questions about human mobility did not begin with the assumptions of international space and progressive time, or by extension, with premises associated with borders, citizens and migrants. Engaging with scholarship that attempts to provide conceptual, analytical and methodological resources to begin to imagine differently, the paper raises some cautions about the ubiquity of mobility as a framework through which to initiate such a project. It looks to a variety of historical and contemporary social movements – including but not only those associated with migrants – as a basis for inquiry into new horizons of the possible.
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