Embodying legal precarity: Living with ongoing short‐term protection in Germany

Abstract

Immigration regimes pay particular attention to the migrant’s body in the process of legal and bureaucratic inscription. Legal precarity, defined by the repeated reception of short‐term protection from deportation, is an existential and deeply embodied experience. The analysis of Schwangerschaftsduldung (temporary suspension of deportation based on pregnancy) and protection for unaccompanied minors, two legal situations in Germany, can shed light on how the migrant’s body receives centre stage in the process of legal status determination and shows how the long journey to relative legal stability deeply affects the body. The two legal categories have in common a temporal limitation and an association with bodily transformations. By centring on the legal trajectories of three migrants, this article shows how the body is taken as the marker of vulnerability and (un)deservingness and becomes the bearer of legal precarity.

Geschlecht als Erfahrung

“…Her fieldwork spanned her pregnancy, was on hold during her parental leave, and was resumed when her daughter, who occasionally accompanied her to fieldwork meetings, was ten months old. Magdalena's transition into motherhood sensitized her for various new research topics, such as the embodied experience of legal precarity (Suerbaum 2023a) or the challenges of mothering during displacement (Suerbaum 2023b(Suerbaum , 2022. Furthermore, being an (expectant) mother while conducting ethnographic research significantly affected Magdalena's encounters with her interlocutors.…”

Recommendations for collecting and analysing migration-related determinants in public health research

“…For study participants without German citizenship, we additionally recommend asking for the current residence status. For people with temporary or insecure residence status, differences in psychological strain and stressful experiences, as well as in terms of access to health care, are to be considered, which might further impact health outcomes [ 62 , 63 ]. Since the residence status is a changeable characteristic, information on this is only valid for the survey time.…”

Post‐2015 refugees in Germany: “Culture of welcome”, solidarity or exclusion?

“…Focusing on the specific type of toleration given for vocational training purposes ( Ausbildungsduldung ) Drangsland (2020) and Fontanari (2022) display how it can be mobilized as a bordering tool to produce skilled workers and extend neoliberal deservingness to forced migrants. Suerbaum (2021) in this special issue picks up on the deservingness claims of the unaccompanied minors and brings it into the conversation with another time‐bound legal protection mechanism, that is, temporary suspension of deportation based on pregnancy ( Schwangerschaftsduldung ). Her contribution, based on long‐term ethnographic research in Berlin, unveils how a migrant's body is central to the legal status determination in Germany, at times a successful claim of deservingness but unceasingly a bearer of legal precarity and racialization.…”