Research project

Temporary protection as a durable solution? (TemPro)

TemPro is a collaboration between anthropologists and legal scholars in Norway, UK and Denmark that explores the effects of temporary protection in the current asylum and refugee systems.

How does the temporary nature of their legal status affect how refugees manage the competing demands of settling in Europe and planning for an eventual return?

Photo:

Stein J. Bjørge/Aftenposten

Main content

The full name of the project is Temporary protection as a durable solution? The 'return turn' in asylum policies in Europe (TemPro).

Following high numbers of refugee arrivals in 2015, European countries have implemented restrictive policies reinforcing the temporary nature of the protection they are willing to provide. These measures, part of a ‘return turn’ in the practice of refugee law, include granting short-term protection permits to refugees from certain groups, stricter requirements for receiving permanent residence, and regular protection reviews to identify people whose need for asylum no longer exists.

Dilemmas these policies pose for inclusion and welfare are intensified by the fact that affected refugees often come from fragile states like Somalia, Afghanistan and Syria. Return to their previous homes remains a remote possibility for most. At the same time, they retain only limited membership rights in their place of residence.

TemPro draws on an intersectional perspective to explore the implications of increased legal fragmentation of refugee protection in and across refugee law, policy, and the lives of refugees. The project further builds on and extends recent advances within migration studies that approach the temporal dimensions of migration governance.

By investigating (primarily) post-2015 developments in Norway, Denmark and the UK, TemPro adresses the following questions:

How do changes in national and EU-level laws and policies affect the durability of residence for recognized refugees? How are policies applied vis-à-vis different refugee groups: Afghans, Somalis and Syrians?
How does temporary protection interact with facets of the welfare state designed to promote integration? What areas of conflict exist between asylum and integration policies on the one hand, and the intention of policies and their implementation on the other?
How does the temporary nature of their legal status affect how refugees manage the competing demands of settling in Europe and planning for an eventual return?
Are temporary protection practices compatible with refugee and human rights law? Under what conditions?
How do temporary protection regimes relate to states’ duties to promote durable solutions and inclusive societies under the UN Global Compact for Refugees and the Sustainable Development Goals?

The project is lead by Jessica Schultz, senior researcher at the Chr. Michelsens Institute.

From UiB, researcher Marry-Anne Karlsen at Department of Social Anthropology and postdoctor Kari Anne Klovholt Drangsland at SKOK are part of the team.

Researchers at Coventry University og University of Aarhus are also involved in TemPro.

News

Final conference for the project: Temporary asylum as the new normal? Experience and dilemmas in Northern Europe. 6 November, 09-13 at Litteraturhuset i Oslo.

UiB news piece about the 22nd Nordic Migration Research Conference (NMR) in Bergen, 14-16 August 2024: The politics of mobility and precarity. During the conference, TemPro researchers Jessica Schultz, Kari Anne Drangsland, Sarah-Louise Mortensen, Jens Vedsted-Hansen, Narges Ghandchi and Mikkel Rytter contributed to the panel Precarious legal inclusion: Consequences of the ‘temporary turn’ in asylum policies in Northern Europe.

New article, April 2024: Schultz, Jessica & Nakache, Delphine (2024) Unsettling expectations of stay: probationary immigration policies in Canada and Norway. CMS 12, 19

Dissemination: Kari Anne Drangsland gave a lecture and talked with master students in theology and ministers at Spurgeon’s College, London. Title of the lecture: The temporary turn in asylum policies in Europe. Exploring the redemptive promise of waiting, drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Hamburg. 17.04.2024

New article, February 2024: Drangsland, Kari Anne (2024 Speaking Racism - Racionlinguistic Frontiers, Worth and Belonging in the Governing of Refugees in Norway. Geopolitics.

Book launch: In November 2023, TemPro organized a book launch for the book Paradigmeskiftets konsekvenser: Flygtninge, stat og civilsamfund called The paradigm shift in Danish asylum policy and Norwegian experiences.

New book, August 2023: Paradigmeskiftets konsekvenser: Flygtninge, stat og civilsamfund. Edited by Mikkel Rytter, Sarah-Louise J. Mortensen, Susanne Bregnbæk & Zachary Whyte. Aarhus universitetsforlag.

In February 2023, The 2022 TemPro mapping study on Norway, 'The temporary turn in Norwegian asylum law and practice' was launched at the Institutt for Samfunnsforskning's seminar 'Flyktninger og sårbarhet – Hvordan ivaretas og skapes sårbarhet gjennom norsk flyktningpolitikk og regelverk?. Jessica Schultz and Marry-Anne Karlsen participated in the seminar.

In June 2023, Jessica Schultz and Marry-Anne Karlsen led the Bergen Summer Research School course Contested childhood in the context of migration.

Check out TemPro's resource site on interdisciplinarity in migration research here.
Check out the TemPro researcher's two podcasts here:

Project period

2020-2024

Partners

Project leader:

Jessica Schultz, Senior Researcher at Chr. Michelsens Institute

Partners:

Centre for Women's and Gender Research, UiB

Kari Anne Klovholt Drangsland, Postdoctoral Fellow

Department of Social Anthropology, UiB

Marry-Anne Karlsen, Associate Professor

Coventry University

Ezra Kaytaz, Assistant Professor at the Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations

Aarhus University

Mikkel Rytter, Professor of Anthropology

Jens Vedsted-Hansen, Professor Emeritus, Law

Sarah-Louise Japhetson Mortensen, PhD student in Anthropology

Financing

Financed by:

The Norwegian Research Council

Budget:

11.981.000 NOK

Website

https://www.cmi.no/projects/2506-temporary-protection

Photo:

Research Council of Norway

Rapporter

Rapport: The temporary turn in Norwegian asylum law and practice

Rapport: Refugees as future returnees? Anatomy of the ‘paradigm shift’ towards temporary protection in Denmark

Tilknyttet innhold

Temporary asylum as the new normal? Experience and dilemmas in Northern Europe

The project TemPro: Temporary protection as a durable solution? is coming to an end and will have its final conference at Litteraturhuset i Oslo.

The politics of mobility and precarity – and the alternatives

IMER Bergen is honoured to invite you to the 22nd Nordic Migration Research Conference at the University of Bergen 14-16 August 2024. The conference is organized in cooperation with Nordic Migration Research

The Politics of Mobility and Precarity – and the Alternatives

More than 250 migration scholars from around the world are gathered for the 22nd Nordic Migration Research (NMR) conference, taking place at the University of Bergen, 14-16 August.

A red and white building, blue sky in the background

Listening to Papenreye – the soundscape of an urban asylum camp

In this essay published by Global Research Programme on Inequality - GRIP, SKOK's postdoctoral fellow Kari Anne Drangsland focuses on the soundscape of urban asylum camps in Germany.

To stabler med eksemplarer av boken Paragdigmeskiftes konsekvenser

The paradigm shift in Danish asylum policy and Norwegian experiences

Welcome to the launch of the book Paradigmeskiftets konsekvenser and to a panel conversation about the 'return turn' in Norwegian asylum policy.

Contested childhood in the context of migration

Law, practice, lived experience

Child first, migrant second?

What does it means to apply a rights-based perspective on migrant children, and children in forced migration in particular?

What role does expert knowledge play in asylum litigation?

Migration researcher Marry-Anne Karlsen at the Centre for Women's and Gender Research (SKOK) at UiB has been granted prestigious funding by the EU to do research on expert knowledge in asylum litigation.

Fractured protection and bodily exhaustion: navigating the paradigm shift in Danish asylum policy

In this seminar, Sarah-Louise Japhetson Mortensen will present findings from her 12 months ethnographic fieldwork among Syrian refugees in Denmark.

New podcast: Er vi der snart? (Are we there yet?)

This podcast explores how temporary protection and the recent focus on return in Danish asylum policy influence the everyday lives of Syrian refugees and professionals in the field.

Refugee Law and Refugee Lives

A podcast series of the TemPro research project, where we explore the increasingly temporary terms of asylum in Europe and globally.

RE:MIGRATION - New perspectives on movement, research, and society

Researchers from the CMI and UiB TemPro project are organizing a panel during the 21st Nordic Migration Research Conference in Copenhagen from 17 to 19 August 2022.

A woman wearing a face-mask with a placard with the words Seeking asylum is not a crime

Temporary protection? Increasing Precarity, Undoing Refuge

This panel about temporary protection brings practitioners and researchers into conversation, among them Jessica Schultz from the TemPro project at Chr. Michelsens Institute and UiB.

A large grey and white building with a green area with flowers and trees in front

Socio-Legal Perspectives in Migration Research: Potentials and Challenges

This workshop is a cross-disciplinary coming together of legal and anthropological perspectives.

Three men and three children in front of a plane at night time - the man in front has a facecovering and is holding a child

What happens if the refugees cannot return quickly?

In this opinion piece in Norwegian daily Bergens Tidende, TemPro researchers Drangsland, Karlsen and Schultz ask: What happens if the Ukrainian refugees cannot return within a short time?

Two black and white photos - one of a child behind barbed wire showing the peace sign with his fingers, and one of railroad tracks

Collective protection as a short-term solution: European responses to the protection needs of refugees from the war in Ukraine

In this blog post, TemPro researchers including SKOK researchers Drangsland and Karlsen provide important reflections on temporary protection for refugees from Ukraine.

To menn i mørke klær, en åsside og et tre med gule blader i bakgrunnen

Regjeringen åpner for å innskrenke retten til flyktningstatus. Det er urovekkende.

In this op-ed, Jessica Schultz at CMI and Kari Anne Drangsland at SKOK/UiB criticize the Norwegian government's refugee policy for creating a B team of refugees.

Black stick figures interacting with splashes of red between them

Interdisciplinarity in Migration Research: Combining law and anthropology

These pages present a selection of resources and reflections about the application of interdisciplinary research, mainly focusing on legal analysis and ethnography. It was initiated by researchers at the University of Bergen and Chr. Michelsens Institute.

Attachments and the arc of refugee protection: a legal perspective

What does it mean to have ‘attachments’ to a country or a community?

A screen with numbers on them in blue and yellow, and a hand holding up a queue ticket

Addressing the co-production of law and time in regularisation processes: legal and ethnographic lines of enquiry

The significance of time and temporality for migration processes and governance has received increasing attention within migration research in recent years.

Multiple, uneven and relational time in ethnographic research

In the following, we want to reflect on what it means for interdisciplinary studies of migration to understand time as multiple, uneven, and relational.

To mørkelilla halvrundinger på lys lilla bakgrunn

Temporal governance, protection elsewhere and the ‘good’ refugee: a study of the shrinking scope of asylum within the UK

This CMI study traces the temporary turn in the UK, where asylum policies have traditionally focused more on preventing new arrivals than on limiting the rights of people with refugee status.

Tre mennesker går langs en strand, en person har et grått teppe over seg og er flankert i en person i Røde Kors-uniform på høyre side og en mann i hvit skjorte på venstre side.

Temporary protection as a durable solution for Afghan refugees in Europe?

In this blog post, the authors argue that the European response to Afghan refugees during the past decade has reinforced the harms of protracted displacement in countries of asylum as well as upon ‘return’ to Afghanistan.

8th EMN Educational Seminar on Migration: “Migration in a Multilateral World”

Postdoctoral fellow at SKOK, Kari Anne Drangsland, presents at the European Migration Network's 2021 conference on migration.

The 'return turn' in asylum law and its implications for Afghan protracted displacement

As part of the International Association for the Study of Forced Migration's 2021 Conference, TemPro researchers Esra Kaytaz and Jessica Schultz discussed how spatial and temporal limits on asylum reinforce protracted dispacement for Afghan refugees.

New Practices of Temporary Protection? Cessation of Refugee Status under the 1951 Convention

At The Refugee Law Initiative's 5th Annual Conference in June 2021, TemPro researchers presented critical perspectives on developments in cessation practice.

Kvinne i raud jakke, svart genser, dongeribukse og fargerikt sjal sitter på en grønn benk med rosa rhododenron-busker i bakgrunnen

Exploring the “return turn” in Germany

Kari Anne Drangsland, postdoctoral researcher in the TemPro project, explores how the turn towards temporary protection materialises in Germany and Norway.

The New Plan for Immigration and the risks of extending Temporary Protection Status

This blog post by TemPro project members forms part of a series of blog posts responding to the UK Home Office’s New Plan for Immigration.

A young woman in winter clothing in front of a beach

How is the “Return Turn” experienced by refugee families in Denmark?

The TemPro project's PhD student, Sarah-Louise J. Mortensen, explores how Syrian and Somali refugee families experience and cope with “temporary residence” and “return” in their everyday life in Denmark.

An illustration of a dark-skinned man and a white-skinned woman facing each other, with speech bubbles containing the messages "Engage non-refoulement obligations under Article 3" and "Further precarisation of a suspended life."

Interdisciplinary Methods in Migration Research

This two-day workshop explores how interdisciplinary methods drawing on the disciplines of law and anthropology can be productively applied to research questions in the field of migration.

A hand in front of a wallpaper background

20th Nordic Migration Research Conference

During this conference, the TemPro project contributes with the workshop Precarious Inclusion: Migrants and Refugees in Contemporary Welfare States.

Cessation of refugee status in the Nordic region: developments & dilemmas

When does the right to refugee status end?

Toward Temporary Asylum in the Nordic Countries? Trends and dilemmas

The TemPro researchers Jessica Schultz and Jens Vedsted-Hansen participated in this seminar organized by the Institute of Social Research in Norway.

The 'return turn' in asylum law and policy

WAIT has strengthened its research group with post doctor Jessica Schultz, a lawyer specialized in international refugee law and human rights law.

27.09.2024