In the European society of today temporary residence permits (TRP) are largely directed at labor market issues, not protection issues. This responsibility-based model implies that the importance of getting a job is the norm regarding what life choices an immigrant "should” do to renew their TRP:s.

In the light of the UN's sustainability goals of reduced inequality, discourses about integration needs to be discussed and problematized to clarify what their implications are for individuals as for society. The aim of the following study is to describe and analyse the field of tension created between the regulatory requirements and the individual's considered life choices as they are articulated by persons living with TRP:s.

The study is based on interviews about life choices with six persons with TRP. The material is analysed with discourse analysis based on the concepts of temporality, liminality and agency and the analyse resulted in three discourses about, legal security (1), ontological security (2) and interrelational freedom (3). The three discourses can be seen as the field within which the individual make a specific choice.

The results show that life with TRP affects choices about family, education and work, but also the approach towards life in general. In all their choices, the informants must prioritize between increasing the chances of obtaining a renewed residence permit or moving towards long time goals. Choices are made with the cost of giving up educational goals or ontological safety, but at times the informants put their own agency in the front seat even though they risk to be sent back to the danger they once fled. The oppressive, colonizing, feature of the responsibility-based discourse risks putting people in a liminal situation that backfires on society in terms of sustainability, and equality.