Chronotopic mechanisms of sedentary subjectification: Territorializing Venezuela’s communes

Abstract Time is wielded as a socio-political tool to regulate people’s (im)mobility. This article examines how the moral framing of space–time functions as migration governance. In Venezuela, where outmigration is taking place on a large scale, the government has devised a moral discourse based on a specific construction of the past, present, and future. In so doing, it has formed a ‘chronotope of containment’ that attempts to minimize the emigration of government supporters to safeguard its stability and claim to power. Socially constructed boundaries and categories emerge from the chronotope, naturalizing sedentarism through the control of affects, habits, and the formation of subjectivity. Based on interviews with government supporters, government statements, and documents, I identify three ‘chronotopic mechanisms of sedentary subjectification’ within this chronotope that generate immobility among government supporters: 1. Spatio-temporal acceleration, 2. Commune (De)territorialization, and 3. Geographies of terror. By identifying how these discursive mechanisms operate, this article shows how chronotopes of containment produce immobility in a context of large-scale outmigration where staying put is not the default but a complex and politicized choice.