Navigating Im/mobilities: Spatio-Temporality of Cross-Border Familyhood Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Despite the proliferation of cross-border family and migration studies, previous research foregrounded the spatiality of migration experiences, leaving the temporal a subordinate dimension in the examination of migration. Although studies investigating temporal processes of migration emerged in recent years, few studies theorized how the spatial and the temporal shape each other in conditioning migrant im/mobilities and family lives. To fill this lacuna, this article adopts a spatio-temporal lens to examine how Mainland Chinese-Hong Kong cross-border families maintained their familyhood before and during the pandemic. Drawing on in-depth interview and ethnographic data collected from 145 parents and children in cross-border families, we illuminate how spatial and temporal constraints compelled cross-border families to utilize heightened spatial and temporal border crossings (on a daily or weekly basis) as a strategy to maintain familyhood before the pandemic, and how these families made responsive and adaptive arrangements when such spatio-temporal flexibility was disabled due to the various border restrictions implemented on both sides of Mainland China and Hong Kong during the pandemic. We explicate how cross-border families experienced temporal disorientation due to the intense sense of uncertainty and prolonged stagnation, and how that fundamentally structured the trajectories and functioning of the families. Through illustrating how the temporal and the spatial dynamically shape and structure each other, we clarify how spatial and temporal dimensions of mobilities, and their different combinations, lead to voluntary or involuntary im/mobilities in the cross-border family context. Overall, the findings shed light on the relationship between the spatiality and temporality of im/mobilities.