The phenomenon of the shifting border, in which the temporal border is one of the key features, reaffirms precisely the double-edged, or Janus-faced, role of time in the control of the presence of migrants within a certain territory that is at the heart of this book. On the one hand, the temporal border is the demonstration of the seemingly endless possibilities of this form of temporal governance of the process of the presence of migrants within a given territory by means of legal time. On the other hand, precisely these frenetic attempts to prevent migrants from reaching the territory and the endless efforts to cut down to the bone the entitlement of those present on the territory by means of temporal differentiation demonstrate in a rather cynical way the normative force of the jus temporis that I have argued for in this book. It is because we acknowledge that generally the presence of migrants within a territory matters that we try to prevent people from reaching our territory and that we develop measures that limit those entitlements for the undesired aliens. The argument of jus temporis is stating the obvious: human time has value.

The jus temporis that is argued for in this chapter aims to explicate the value of human time that is to be found in the finite, irreversible, and unstoppable character of human time. To make the value of human time explicit, "rootedness" and "integration" are conceptually distinguished. The latter signifying qualified time, the former mere lapse of human time. Rootedness simply signifies the entanglement of presence on a territory with the lapse of finite and irreversible human time. This conception of rootedness is at the heart of jus temporis and its implications are not limited to questions of citizenship acquisition. It is argued that the value of rootedness equally applies to waiting time in procedures, endless forms of temporariness, and unlawful residence. Concretely, it is argued that this jus temporis implies two elements. The first is a certain openness to the future, the possibility that a certain situation will not last forever. The second element is that there should be end-terms at work in law: procedures may not last forever, temporariness may not continue eternally, and there should be a moment when long-term unlawful residences can become lawful.