‘You can never feel safe’: Danish revocation practice and the production of radical uncertainty

This article explores refugees’ experiences with the Danish revocation process, arguing that this places them in situations of protracted radical uncertainty and analysing the concrete legal and administrative practices that contribute to producing this uncertainty. The analysis proceeds in three substantive sections. First, we locate refugees’ experiences during the revocation process within the literature on radical uncertainty. Second, we present the legal and administrative framework for the revocation of residence permits, highlight the novel characteristics of the Danish ‘paradigm shift’ and explain how the law is implemented and administered through the revocation process. Third, we give an account of four different aspects of uncertainty experienced by Syrian refugees in this context: uncertainty as unexpectedness and unpredictability; uncertainty as imperfect knowledge; uncertainty as insecurity and risk of danger; and finally, uncertainty as a temporal experience of waiting and hasting.