ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I examine what happens when control of the patient’s time in the medical encounter is challenged by the unpredictability and temporariness produced by migration law and enforcement. How does the temporal lens of migration control frame and condition the medical gaze and hence the medical care offered to irregular migrants? I start by unfolding an ethnographic example where the different temporalities involved in medical practice and migration control, and the tension between them, come to the fore. Following the patient over time, I show his continuous negotiation over time with healthcare providers and the immigration authorities. I also show how the threat of deportation and the emergency frame of the Healthcare Regulation implemented in 2011 concerning the right to health and care services to people without ordinary residence in the country had a disciplinary effect in the sense that it oriented the medical gaze to the temporal present. Consequently, care came repeatedly in the form of short-term solutions, rather than offering a cure.
