Since January 2021, the Danish Immigration Service has revoked the residence permits of hundreds of Syrian refugees coming from the Damascus area. The revocations risk separating family members with different refugee statuses by rejecting the prolongation of residency of those with a temporary residence permit (§7,3). However, while their cases are appealed to the Refugee Appeals Board and they wait for a final decision, the families can continue their everyday activities of building a life in Denmark. The situation has created a sense of panic and increased temporariness among Syrian refugees in general: Who is next? What to do? And when will we know? During my ongoing fieldwork among Syrian refugee families in Denmark, Jamal, a young Syrian man, exhaustedly exclaimed: “everything collapses again!”.

In the light of this “collapse”, the paper explores Syrian refugees’ contradictory experiences of continuously building their lives in Denmark while planning new beginnings elsewhere. Furthermore, it unfolds the temporality of beginnings and the sense of self, when it seems to become a part of one’s life trajectory to begin again.