Unpacking the temporary protection of displaced people from Ukraine within the tightening migration governance in Sweden and Finland

This article focuses on the Swedish and Finnish implementation of the European Union’s Temporary Protection Directive (TPD), activated by the EU after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Historically, these reasonably similar Nordic EU member states differed in their willingness to receive immigrants: Finland became a net receiver of immigrants only in the 1980s and 1990s, while Sweden has, since the 1950s, been exceptionally open to welcoming immigrants, including asylum seekers on humanitarian grounds. Migration legislation in both countries has recently taken a restrictive turn. The article examines the nuances of this turn by identifying the increasingly restrictive tendencies in Swedish and Finnish asylum and refugee policies and considers the national implementation of the TPD against the backdrop of these changes over time. Using the concept of temporariness, it argues that for the Ukrainians, the supposedly generous protection status turned out to be a temporary and limited welcome, providing them no certainty for the future.