Deportability expansion: legal migrants’ narratives about permanent residence in Norway

Recent changes in immigration regulations have made permanent residence more difficult to obtain. Drawing on 29 in-depth interviews with family migrants, refugees and labour migrants in Norway, this article investigates the meaning that migrants ascribe to the status of permanent residence. Participants’ narratives were shaped by their particular legal status. Reflections about insecurity and worry were particularly pronounced in interviews with refugees. That said, restrictive requirements for permanent residence also produce ‘a palpable sense of deportability’ (De Genova, N. 2002. “Migrant “Illegality” and Deportability in Everyday Life” Annual Review of Anthropology 31:419–447. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.anthro.31.040402.085432) among relatively privileged participants. We propose the concept ‘deportability expansion’ to account for the processes by which the possibility of irregularisation increasingly extends in time, to previously privileged migrant groups, and becomes embedded with uncertainty about how, when and if one fulfils the requirements for permanent residence.