Transnational Engagements among Ukrainian Refugees Residing in Norway under Temporary Protection

ABSTRACT This article examines the complexity of transnational practices among Ukrainian refugees residing in Norway, with particular attention to how aspirations, resources, and refugee policies shape their transnationalism. Norway’s national legislation closely aligns with the European Union’s Temporary Protection Directive (TPD), which has been applied to Ukrainian refugees since the Russian invasion in 2022. This regime facilitates the management of large-scale refugee inflows while simultaneously placing refugees in a state of legal uncertainty. While existing scholarship has highlighted how such legal liminality contributes to vulnerability, less is known about how Ukrainian refugees navigate the TPD through concrete transnational practices. Drawing on qualitative interviews with Ukrainians conducted in Norway in 2024 and 2025, we develop the core argument that these practices have both instrumental and emotional dimensions, shaped in part by transnational networks and refugees’ aspirations, as well as institutional structures and policies in Ukraine, Norway, and other host countries. In doing so, we identify specific elements of Norwegian and European temporary protection frameworks that enable and constrain transnational opportunity structures.