This article examines the future as a technique of government aimed at controlling young people's relationships to the present. It analyses the futures deemed feasible in a school located in a border area affected by the Colombian armed conflict. Based on ethnographic data collected primarily between 2013 and 2014, this study highlights the future's regulatory nature and the types of commitments it seeks to generate in students. By examining the ideas and practices that align students' horizons with state needs, this research reveals the tensions between an institutionalised future packaged as a rural entrepreneurship project and students' aspirations for geographical and social mobility.