Scholars have long observed that the ‘traditional’ institutions of international protection (refugee status under the 1951 Refugee Convention and complementary protection) are, or are perceived to be, inadequate in situations of rapid, large-scale displacement. In response, states have increasingly relied on temporary forms of protection based on the concept of temporary refuge. These emergency-related and seemingly time-bound responses, however, are often implemented in an ad hoc and disorganised manner and tend to persist long after the immediate crisis of mass border crossings has subsided, entrenching the precarious legal status of protected individuals over extended periods.

Although temporary refuge and temporary protection statuses can play a valuable role in managing large-scale displacement, they become deeply problematic when they are used to withhold access to durable asylum for prolonged periods, thereby pushing their beneficiaries into social exclusion. By analysing the interplay between temporary refuge and forms of durable asylum, the book reveals the extent to which international law enables, and often encourages, such outcomes in various contexts.

To conceptualise the phenomenon of the undue entrenchment of temporary forms of protection, the book introduces the notion of the ‘gap between temporary refuge and asylum’ — a legal space in which protection is granted but stability is withheld, and in which provisional measures become substitutes for durable solutions. In addition to examining this gap at the level of international law, the book draws on three case studies — Lebanon, Uganda, and Poland — to show how the gap materialises in different contexts, as well as the tools states employ either to bridge it or to exacerbate its effects.

By foregrounding the tension between durable asylum and emergency-driven temporary refuge, the book offers a novel lens through which the operation of the global refugee regime can be examined.

The book, provisionally titled The Gap Between Temporary Refuge and Asylum: How International Refugee Law Entrenches Crisis, is forthcoming with De Gruyter Brill.