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

Shorter residence permits and an emphasis on temporary stays have highlighted the deportability of all refugees residing in Denmark. Due to security assessments of Damascus (2019) and Rural Damascus (2021), Syrian refugees who hold subsidiary protection statuses have been a particular target group for the Danish Immigration Service’s re-examination of protection needs.

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

Her research highlights how the temporality of protection over time has imprinted itself on Syrian Refugees bodies and minds – manifested as nightmares, stress, depression, tremor, anxiety and sleeplessness – which she identifies as bodily and mental exhaustion. She draws on the concept “Politics of exhaustion” to discuss how exhaustion can be understood as an effect of technologies of governance and as lived experiences and resistance during her interlocutors’ daily navigations between protection needs.