Research on the temporal dimensions of international migration focuses on how migrants experience time. This study instead turns attention to public interest lawyers, whose work plays a crucial role in ensuring favorable legal outcomes for immigrants, in order to consider time’s salience within the US asylum context. Based on twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork with Los Angeles-based public interest asylum attorneys, this article argues that lawyers confront both weaponized efficiency and weaponized inefficiency in the course of representing asylum seekers. Advocates must rush to keep pace, on the one hand, as various state actors accelerate asylum processes and, on the other, find ways to advance clients’ interests even as state agencies selectively slow procedures to a standstill. These findings affirm that temporal contradictions define the US asylum system. Further, they demonstrate that lawyers experience these contradictions not as natural phenomena but, rather, as temporal violence: in a range of contexts, government action mobilizes time—whether actively or passively—in the service of migration control.

中文翻译：

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美国庇护律师和临时暴力

国际移民时间维度的研究重点关注移民如何体验时间。相反，本研究将注意力转向公共利益律师，他们的工作在确保移民获得有利的法律​​结果方面发挥着至关重要的作用，以便考虑美国庇护背景下时间的重要性。本文基于与洛杉矶公共利益庇护律师进行的十二个月的人种学实地调查，认为律师在代表寻求庇护者的过程中面临着武器化的效率和武器化的低效率。一方面，随着各种国家行为者加速庇护程序，倡导者必须赶紧跟上步伐；另一方面，即使国家机构有选择地放慢程序直至停滞，也要找到促进客户利益的方法。这些发现证实了美国庇护制度的时间矛盾。此外，他们还表明，律师所经历的这些矛盾不是自然现象，而是时间暴力：在一系列背景下，政府行动无论是主动还是被动地调动时间来服务于移民控制。