The temporary turn in asylum: a new agenda for researching the politics of deterrence in practice

While policies of non-admission, deflection and containment have animated Global North states’ response to refugees since the 1980s, the past decade has witnessed a new turn towards post-entry measures making protection more temporary and limiting the rights previously associated with the grant of asylum. This special issue explores recent deterrence strategies in Denmark and Norway, focussed on the revocation regimes adopted to withdraw or deny the extension of refugees’ residence permits. It provides ethnographic insights into the everyday consequences of temporariness as well as the dilemmas it presents from a legal perspective. Building on existing literature on deterrence policies in refugee studies scholarship, this introduction will propose a new research agenda for studying newer dimensions of deterrence in practice. It broadens the scope of analysis to include multiple actors and levels, centered on the everyday imprints of deterrence following admission and the recognition of a refugee’s need for protection. Bridging juridical–political, socio-legal, and ethnographic approaches, the introduction will advance the field of international migration research by discussing the methodological, ethical and epistemological challenges of studying temporariness in refugee protection, while also presenting strategies for researching deterrence without uncritically reproducing the policy discourse aimed at deterring refugees.