The Impact of Temporary Residence Permits on Young Refugees’ Abilities to Build a Life in Sweden
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The article looks at how temporary residence permits structure refugees life making projects in Sweden. It critically engages with the notion of integration, which is a very welcome endeavor. I really appreciate the very clear ways in which the authors refer to this highly politicized notion of integration and disentangle it in the ways policies refer to integration, migrants themselves use this term and the analytical concept, which is not very useful, as I agree. Therefore, the authors use ‘building a life”, which I understand. However, I think it would strengthen this argument even more, when the authors would write how “Sweden” and its policies define ‘integration’, how migrants themselves refer to the expectations they transport and how the authors see the links between ‘integration’ and “life building”. I would assume that integration plays a role in life building, in the sense of being considered an insider in social relationships, institutions, and the “societies” (here and there) in general. Also, maybe authors would find it helpful to look at the literature on affectivity and emotions in the process of life building of young refugees (see also current Social Sciences issue on migrant organisations).
Some smaller issues:
The section on asylum procedures in Sweden begins with “as a response to large reception..”, I was wondering if the link is not rather that the immigration of asylum seekers has been taken up by the far right and policy makers have seen themselves to display that they are “tough on migrants”, or how is the link in Sweden? Also, it might be helpful to give some information on why, in general, policies changed toward more restrictive ones in Sweden?
On page 4, there is information on understandings of integration referring to studies previously conducted. For readers not familiar with the Swedish context, it would be helpful to have more information on Swedish concepts of integration and how the studies themselves used this term.
I appreciate the lens on vulnerability and agency (p. 5 ff.). However, I would suggest to introduce these terms already earlier in the paper as a framework, where temporariness, vulnerability, agency, and policy reforms are entangled.
I would also like to read more in the methods section about the sample composition in terms of education, as I would assume that their credentials and knowledge play a role for their vulnerability/agency. Also, more information on data analysis, in addition to the material that has been coded according to the themes, would be helpful to understand the ways of knowledge production in this multilingual team.
The findings are interesting and shed light on the daily experiences of young refugees with temporary residence permits. Descriptions of their life worlds and experiences would benefit from a more analytical evaluation of the material in terms of the concepts of vulnerability and agency. That is related to my previous argument, that this paper would profit from a more elaborated framework composed of temporariness, vulnerability, and agency as elaborated on the example of recent policy reforms in Sweden and how they impact the experiences of young Syrian refugees. Overall, I enjoyed reading this paper. Thank you very much!
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Thank you for the opportunity to review this timely and significant research. Authors have conducted a qualitative investigation using interviews with 40 young refugees (primarily from Syria and Afghanistan) to explore the impact of temporary residence permits on their everyday life experiences.
Unfortunately, the manuscript seems to be submitted without careful proofreading. It includes a lot of unfilled sentences and brackets. Many references are cited as XXXs and YYYs which is very disturbing.
Another extremely major issue is the lack of description regarding the ethical protection of participants rights. Was the protocol reviewed by an IRB body? consent forms collected? interviews recorded? were the data were saved?
Other aspects that need to be improved:
- The introduction is extremely long and detailed dwarfing the study’s actual purpose. There is no need to provide all this extensive background information. Authors need to only select the most important information that is needed to serve their work and better introduce readers to their findings.
- In the first paragraph: please delete the sentence including a participant’s quote as it seems prematurely presented.
- P1 Line 32 “Earlier research (XXXX) on youth migration in nine….”..!! Please carefully review the entire manuscript.
- Authors refer to the work by Flyvbjerg 2001 as being a major references for building conclusions. This is awkward as with qualitative research, the participants’ accounts are indeed the major reference. Pre-assumptions on how the results will be shaped should never be made. The conclusions at the end does not even seem to reflect this work.
- Page 2 line 49: (see WWWW) !!!
- Page 6 line 248. What was the research project that authors are referring to?
- The manuscript has major missed parts related to participants' characteristics. Given this was a qualitative investigation, phrases like the majority, most of, half… should not be used.
- It is very important to include a table detailing the characteristics of each participant. 4o rows are needed with each including the gender, age, origin, accompany status, residence, date arriving Sweden, permit status, and any other important info. Each row should be labeled as Participant 1, participant 2, etc… The results then should refer to those numbers so readers can link quotes with the participant. For example, instead of saying Masoud said..., authors could cite the quotes as (p1), referring to participant one for example.
- Mixing online and in person interviews is problematic. Careful attention should be given to describing both contexts in detail.
- The study design should be clearly named and described.
- The data analysis process should be clearly named and described. The reference is needed as there are so many ways to analyze qualitative data. Also the four elements of qualitative rigor should be clearly described and reflected on the methods.
- Authors are strongly advised to consult with a qualitative research expert as the way the results are currently presented is totally incorrect. The thematic analysis (if used) should be clearly described. The themes should be introduced first then detailed along with supportive quotes.
- The results are confused with the discussion. Those should be separated.
- Conclusions are not well synthesized and not well connected to the findings. They seem to be an extension for the background information.
Thank you
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear Social Sciences editorial board, dear authors,
Thanks for allowing me to review the manuscript entitled “The impact of temporary residence permits on refugee migrant youth’s abilities to build a life in Sweden”. The manuscript is well written and presents interesting data, which I feel the authors can explore way further than they currently do. After careful reading, I have five comments, which I hope will help the author to rework the manuscript.
First, is the contribution to existing scholarship. Based on the current manuscript, I am unconvinced about the addition of this manuscript towards the body of scholarship on temporalities in migration governance, as well as the governance of immigrant youth. Both, as you also detail in the literature review yourself, deal with the issue of temporary residency, and how it puts life “on hold” for immigrants – whether young or old – and what consequent emotional and material effects this brings about. The authors mention on p. 4 to provide “a more in-depth analysis” as compared to the other literature cited, but their conclusions are fairly similar to those described in their literature review in section 4 (especially Wernesjö). So, I am not convinced about what the manuscript in its current form “adds” to the body of literature out there. Perhaps the authors can take another critical look at their findings, and compare these more thoroughly with those of other authors: what is different, similar, and what assumptions do your findings challenge about temporality in migration governance, and the home-making/belonging procedures of youth in particular? It would be good to have this clearly stated in the manuscript.
Second, I find the authors’ theoretical framework – that of agency and vulnerability – not productive for the overall argument. The authors refer to agency and vulnerability throughout the manuscript and the empirics, but it does not become clear to me what these two lenses “add” as a conceptual construct to the analysis. It, in other words, remains quite “shallow”. What kinds of insights do these two lenses bring that other authors who do not start from these do not? What do these lenses learn you about temporality in migration governance? If you agree with me and are thinking of getting rid of them, I would suggest to include further referencing about temporalities in migration governance, and the specificities of the case of minors, instead. Below, I included some sources that might be of help.
Third, I’m confused about the rationale for the research. The authors state on p.2 that “The introduction of temporary residence permits for refugees as the main rule is part of a package of polices that are meant to deter immigration. However, these policies represent a contradiction: Their suggested purpose is to decrease the number of immigrants coming to Sweden and, through this, enable improved migrant integration.” In the remainder of the manuscript, however, the authors do not explain at all what this paradox actually is: who is claiming that temporary residence permits actually help improving migrant integration? Whose integration are we talking about? What does this look like? I was curious to see the argumentation behind this, and would have loved for you to “debunker” it based on your research, but it is unfortunately not mentioned elsewhere.
Fourth, your conclusions do not seem to match much of what has been said in the empirics. For example, on p.11, the authors discuss how unaccompanied minors/migrants are seen as “a risk and at risk” (originally Aradau 2004, not Brown 2015), but this is nowhere else mentioned in the manuscript. If you would like to discuss this, there is an entire body of literature that currently misses from the manuscript (see suggestions below) that need to be engaged with. The conclusion also does not thoroughly engage with the literature on temporalities again, and how your findings speak to your literature review.
Finally, I would love to get more details on the authors methods and analysis. They do not provide details on their way of analyzing the interviews held (coding, themes) nor about their own positionality within the wider research (apart from language proficiency). I’m also wondering whether your discussion on “relatively well off” groups is very productive. In my eyes, it would be stronger to argue for the merits of looking at this group of minors in a theoretical way.
On temporality in migration governance:
Andersson, R. 2014. “Time and the Migrant Other: European Border Controls and the Temporal Economics of Illegality.” American Anthropologists 116 (4): 795–809.
Griffiths, M. 2014. “Out of Time: The Temporal Uncertainties of Refused Asylum Seekers and Immigration Detainees.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 40 (12): 1991–2009.
Griffiths, M. 2017. “The Changing Politics of Time in the UK’s Immigration System.” In Timespace and International Migration, edited by E. Mavroudi, B. Page, and A. Christou, 48–60. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
McNevin, A., and A. Missbach. 2018. “Luxury Limbo: Temporal Techniques of Border Control and the Humanitarianisation of Waiting.” International Journal of Migration and Border Studies 4 (1/2): 12–34.
Schultz, J. (2020). An end to asylum?: Temporary protection and the erosion of refugee status. In Waiting and the Temporalities of Irregular Migration (pp. 170-185). Routledge.
Khosravi and Hage has also written a lot about "waiting", both during asylum procedures but also beyond - this large body of work might also help you with your analysis in which waiting/uncertainty features prominently (also in Eule, Lindberg, Borrelli, Wyss' 2018 book "Migrants before the Law")
On (un)accompanied minors:
Menjívar, C., & Perreira, K. M. (2019). Undocumented and unaccompanied: children of migration in the European Union and the United States. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 45(2), 197-217.
Lems, A., Oester, K., & Strasser, S. (2020). Children of the crisis: ethnographic perspectives on unaccompanied refugee youth in and en route to Europe. Journal of ethnic and migration studies, 46(2), 315-335.
Galli, C. (2020). The ambivalent US context of reception and the dichotomous legal consciousness of unaccompanied minors. Social Problems, 67(4), 763-781.
Meloni, F., & Humphris, R. (2021). Citizens of Nowhere? Paradoxes of State Parental Responsibility for Unaccompanied Migrant Children in the United Kingdom. Journal of Refugee Studies, 34(3), 3245-3263.
Bryan, C., & Denov, M. (2011). Separated refugee children in Canada: The construction of risk identity. Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, 9(3), 242-266.
Hasselberg, I. 2016. Enduring Uncertainty: Deportation, Punishment and Everyday Life. New York: Berghain Books.
Cleton, L. (2022). The time politics of migrant deportability: An intersectional analysis of deportation policy for non-citizen children in Belgium and the Netherlands. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 48(13), 3022-3040.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Thank you for revising this work.
Though the reading was not easy at all given the pdf format did not remove the track changes leading to incoherent sentences, yet I see improved sections but some still in need to be strengthened.
I would reiterate my comment on representing participants characteristics. I would also reiterate my comment on having clear sections (Introduction-methods-findings-discussion/conclusions). Currently, Section 5 includes methods then all of the sudden section 6 starts the thematic presentation of the findings.
Authors mentioned that they revised the introduction and background to a more concise format which was not actually applied.
Authors mentioned they follow certain standards when they wrote their methods and results. Please cite those.
