Clock Time, Politics, and Disrupted Rhythms: An Autoethnography of Temporal Disruption in Transnational Student Life

<p>This paper explores how Erasmus mobility disrupts and reshapes temporal experience through everyday routines and sudden interruptions. Drawing on my semester in Utrecht, I analyze the contrasts between Dutch clock-discipline and the flexible temporalities of Istanbul, as well as the ruptures caused by political protests in Turkey, a canceled trip due to a Dutch railway strike, and encounters with student squatters. Methodologically, the paper adopts an autoethnographic approach based on my own observations and retrospective reflections.</p> <p>Although this was not planned as formal fieldwork, I analytically revisit my memories and experiences as empirical material. Using Thompson’s notions of time-discipline, Miyazaki’s concept of temporal incongruity, Hage’s politics of waiting, and Tsing’s friction, I argue that Erasmus life exposes students to layered temporalities where personal, political, and structural rhythms collide. This paper brings studies of time and temporality into dialogue with research on student mobility, showing how transnational movement is experienced not only spatially but also as a reconfiguration of temporal consciousness and rhythm. These disruptions reveal how time is lived not only as routine but also as anticipation, suspension, and conflict, making temporal out-of-placeness a defining feature of Erasmus student life.</p>