PIL.OT / DEVELOPMENT
PIL.OTv0.62.2
Şevval Nur Acuner examines the increasingly widespread use of temporary and uncertain legal statuses in migration law through the concept of 'liminal legality'. The concept describes an intermediate condition in which migrants are neither fully protected by legal guarantees nor wholly excluded from the legal system, but held in ongoing uncertainty.
The author compares Temporary Protected Status (TPS) in the United States, Duldung in Germany and the temporary protection regime in Türkiye. Despite their different legal and institutional origins, all three keep migrants in 'permanent temporariness': they protect against deportation but systematically hinder access to permanent residence or citizenship and make rights depend on administrative discretion. Acuner proposes predictable, gradual and rights-based status transitions as a solution.
How temporary-protection regimes in the US, Germany and Türkiye leave migrants in a state of permanent temporariness and what this means for rights guarantees.
By assessing Türkiye's temporary protection regime alongside its US and German counterparts, it makes visible the effect of prolonged temporary status on access to rights, which is directly relevant to those working in migration policy and aliens law.
Turkish Journal of Diaspora Studies · 2026
DOI 10.52241/tjds.1937344