Description:
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>Protection in the region has rapidly become a favoured durable solution to refugee situations and the hallmark of all current policies. These initiatives reflect changes in humanitarian approaches that have taken place over the past decades as the focus has shifted towards the resilience of crisis‐affected communities and the need to enable their self‐reliance. Despite the strong logic that this change will bring about more dignified solutions, the approach is easily instrumentalized. This instrumentalization is particularly evident where resilience humanitarianism meets security‐migration politics. This paper focuses on the efforts of the European Union and a number of its member states to advance so‐called protection in the region. The paper reviews the characteristics of these policies, highlights a number of risks and defines some known and lesser known implications of this approach.</jats:p>