In the period 2014–2019, the Dutch authorities governed the duration of asylum procedures in order to control the influx of asylum seekers. They prioritised and accelerated cases with poor chances of success, while they deprioritised cases with good chances of success. This resulted in long asylum procedures for asylum seekers with a likelihood of success and short asylum procedures for those with a poor chance of success. This article contends that this Dutch policy is an illustration of ‘temporal governance’: a governmental strategy to control and discipline migrants by means of time. This form of governance is based on a detailed knowledge of processes of asylum procedures, which enables qualification, categorisation and differentiation between different groups of asylum seekers. The focus of this research is on how such temporal governance functions and how it relates to law. A traditional understanding of law and sovereign power entails that law legitimates and restricts power. Strikingly, temporal governance regulating the asylum procedure seems to have a different relationship to law. This article demonstrates that legal standards, in this case the standards of European Union legislation, provide Member States a large amount of room (temporal discretion) to apply temporal governance. Moreover, only a few limited legal remedies remain available, if the duration of the asylum procedure appears unlawful. Instead of limiting temporal governance, law provides ample opportunity for the acceleration and deceleration of asylum cases in order to delay due process of asylum seekers and deter others from arriving. We cannot prove that the Dutch government aimed at deprioritising and decelerating complex asylum cases and cases with good chances of success – which would have been unlawful. However, this was the net result of their chosen policy. We illustrate that instead of a legitimation and restriction of sovereign power to govern the asylum influx by means of time, law can function as a set of tactics to pursue policy aims by employing ‘temporal governance’.

在2014-2019年期间，荷兰当局规定了庇护程序的期限，以控制寻求庇护者的涌入。他们优先考虑并加快了成功机会很少的案例，而对那些成功机会很高的案例进行了低优先级排序。这导致有可能获得成功的寻求庇护者的庇护程序漫长，而那些获得成功机会很少的庇护者的庇护程序也很短。本文认为，荷兰的这项政策是“临时治理”的例证：“政府通过时间手段控制和约束移民的战略”。这种治理形式是基于对庇护程序过程的详细了解，从而可以对寻求庇护者的不同群体进行资格，分类和区分。这项研究的重点是这种时间治理如何发挥作用以及如何与法律联系起来。对法律和主权权力的传统理解要求法律使权力合法化并限制权力。引人注目的是，调节庇护程序的临时治理似乎与法律有着不同的关系。本文表明，法律标准（在这种情况下为欧洲联盟立法的标准）为成员国提供了应用临时治理的大量空间（临时酌处权）。此外，如果庇护程序的持续时间看来是非法的，那么只有少数有限的法律补救办法可用。法律不是限制时间的管理，而是为庇护案件的加速和减速提供了充分的机会，以延迟寻求庇护者的正当程序并阻止其他人到达。我们无法证明荷兰政府旨在降低和减少复杂的庇护案件以及有成功机会的案件的优先级，这本来是非法的。但是，这是他们选择政策的最终结果。我们说明，法律不是通过时间手段来控制庇护潮的合法化和主权主权的限制，而是可以作为通过运用“时间治理”来追求政策目标的一套策略。