Permanent Temporality: Race, Time, and the Materiality of Romanian Identity Cards

Abstract

Documents, in particular identity cards, mediate relationships between individuals and institutions. Their materiality matters and actively impacts how states govern populations and their movements. In this paper, I examine one such object, the Romanian identity card. Focusing on its temporality and agency, I explore how objects and technological procedures enact race. In Romania, people without an address or proof of residence—many of them members of segregated Roma communities living in deep poverty—can only receive a temporary identity card, the Carte de Idenititate Provizorie (CIP). CIP holders do not enjoy full citizenship and are deprived of various rights, such as the right to travel without a passport within the European Union. They are also exposed to heightened surveillance as they must apply annually for a new CIP. Starting from the material object of the CIP, I explore how race comes into being as a relation at the intersection of various temporalities that are folded into the rules and bureaucratic practice entailed in its issue. I offer the concept of “permanent temporality” to analyze how racialization occurs in practices of governing people and their movement in Europe.