In this podcast, we take a historical look at temporary protection status with Prof. Jens Vedsted-Hansen, who has followed the phenomenon from Denmark since the Balkan Wars in the 1990s. At that time, Bosnian refugees received temporary protection status on a group basis, as part of UN-coordinated efforts in Europe. The length of permits and access to labour markets and housing differed among countries. However, the common purpose was to ensure access to protection to people with a presumably short-term need, and whose eventual return was important to disrupt the consequences of wartime ethnic cleansing.
Today, meanwhile, temporary protection is no longer exclusively linked to the specific qualities of group-based arrivals. Instead, it is embedded into the individual assessment for refugee status and pursued as a strategy to deter people from seeking asylum. Short term permits are combined with policies promoting their revocation/non-extension and reduced standards of protection in Denmark (most prominently restrictions on the right to family reunification).
Further reading:
1) Altamirano, Appelqvist, Brekke og Vedsted-Hansen (1998)m En ny flytkningpolitikk i Norden? Midlertidig beskyttelse på 90-tallet.
2) Brekke, Vedsted-Hansen, Stern (2020): https://www.udi.no/globalassets/global/european-migration-network_i/emn-norway-papers/emn-occasional-paper-temporary-asylum-and-cessation-of-refugee-status-in-scandinavia-2020.pdf
3) Tan & Vedsted-Hansen (2021), From Denmark to Damascus Human rights and refugee law dimensions of Denmark’s cessation push https://verfassungsblog.de/from-denmark-to-damascus/
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