Policy Analysis: Temporary Protection Directive and its Implementation in the Nordic Welfare Context : A comparative case study of Sweden and Finland

Abstract: On March 4, 2022, the Temporary Protection Directive (TPD) was activated as a response to a mass influx of Ukrainian refugees. The Directive was ratified by the EU member states already in 2001, following the events of the refugee crisis caused by the Kosovo conflict. Still, it remained unemployed until 2022, when Europe faced yet-another intra-regional conflict. The implementation of TPD has generated a heated academic debate regarding the Directive’s essence and the motivations behind its implementation. Varying from geopolitics to racism, many reasons have been provided when reasoning the Directive’s current implementation and previous non-implementation. This thesis studied the implementation through a critical migration theory lens, with the aim of locating economic motivations impacting the decision to activate the Directive. Therefore, by utilizing the question ‘How can the motivations for implementing the Temporary Protection Directive be understood in light of the Directive’s economic aspects?’ for this particular purpose, the thesis found that the economic aspects of the Directive come to the fore both in commodification as well as selectivity of migration policy. First, the TPD beneficiaries’ unique migration category is generated through its differentiation of legal rights in – and access to – the host country when compared to the refugee status and subsidiary protection. And second, the TPD has the ability to select and therefore target specific groups through its limited scope of protection to cover either a specific country or geographical area. In this way, the thesis contributed to the discussion regarding the logic behind the implementation of TPD.