By Luděk Jirka
The Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine (since February 24th, 2022) led to displacement of many Ukrainians worldwide. As UNHCR (2024) stated, 6.5 million sought refuge globally and 3.7 million were displaced internally. Most externally displaced persons are women with small children (90%) while their spouses are banned from crossing the borders (exceptions are disabled people, men older than 60 years or younger than 18 years, men with three children, health issues or who take care of disabled children; also many spouses had been located in the European countries before the invasion and do not return back to Ukraine). The fleeing of women with children and the ban on men from leaving Ukraine resulted in a transnational arrangement for many Ukrainian families. This arrangement has been taking place for more than two years (although some women have already decided to return back to Ukraine).
Displaced Ukrainians are holders of temporary protection based on the Temporary Protection Directive, which was first launched in the territories of the European Union member states since its creation in 2001. European states provide specific conditions, but temporary protection generally offers humanitarian aid, social benefits and free access to work opportunities and education. For instance, in Germany, temporary protected persons have to take language courses appointed by the state (if they do not have knowledge of German language). In general, displaced persons were offered benefits which might be meaningful for aspirations to settle[1] in the host countries. However, transnational ties to spouses and other family members in Ukraine are still important.
Together with Lucie Macková (Palacký University Olomouc) and Mateusz Kamionka (Jagiellonian University), we conducted qualitative research on displaced persons from Ukraine in Czechia and Poland from summer to autumn 2023. Altogether, 56 women were interviewed, and from the sample, 11 participants had spouses in Ukraine. The reason for the relatively low number of participants with spouses in Ukraine is that many males worked in both host countries before the war, did not return to Ukraine and participants reunified with them. Other participants were single or divorced. Our findings based on 11 participants revealed that transnational ties to spouses, but also other relatives, have a tremendous impact on participants‘ decision-making about stay or return, and this opens the question about the connection between migration aspirations and transnational ties. Participants hoped for reunification with their spouses in Ukraine, as they were mostly willing to maintain the nuclear family ties there, but there was also the possibility of staying in the host country. However, due to martial law in Ukraine and the ban of travelling on men, reunification with spouses in host country is now impossible, and those who would like to stay need to wait until the war ends.
Migration aspirations and transnational ties are two explanatory concepts that are founded on different epistemological standpoints: While transnational ties propose the importance of interpersonal ties and community relations, migration aspirations are studied with a focus on the individual (Aslany et al., 2021; Carling and Collins, 2018). This, on the one hand, calls for a debate about the relation between individual and collective migration aspirations (Müller-Funk, Üstübici and Belloni, 2023). In our research we found that participants prefer collective transnational family bonds over individual migration aspirations. First, their transnational ties decrease the impact of outer determinants, in this case the benefits offered to temporary protected persons in countries of destinations which might cause aspirations to settle. Second, the participants‘ migration aspirations to stay in the host countries are low because their preference of family ties, maintained in the transnational scope, are more important for them than the possibility to stay in the country of destination and tearing apart ties with spouses. Their living situation supports this because they are still dependent on their spouses‘ transnational support, mainly in the form of reverse remittances. Those spouses fighting in the Armed Forces of Ukraine earn significant amount of money for their military service and are thus able to send reverse remittances to family members abroad. Also spouses working in civic employments in Ukraine financially support participants. Most researched participants already work in the host countries, but due to living with small children, and having mostly low-skilled jobs (the reason is that they are forced by the Czech and Polish policies to have a job, but Czechia and Poland did not provide obligatory language courses; this resulted in an employment-skills mismatch) or housing problems, they are not fully independent of their spouses. These findings are not in line with previous research, which finds more autonomous acting of displaced Ukrainian women living in Germany due to more generous social support and better inclusion into the labour market (Byelikova, 2023). To sum up, our findings show the preference for transnational collective family ties instead of individual migration aspirations (to settle). In this sense, the transnational ties engulf migration aspirations because family duties and expectations are deemed more important than individual ambitions.
Luděk Jirka is assistant professor in anthropology at the University of Hradec Králové, Czechia, and a board member of the MITRA Standing Committee.
References:
Aslany, M., Carling, J., Mjelva, M. B. & Sommerfelt, T. (2021). Systematic Review of Determinants of Migration Aspirations. Southampton: University of Southampton.
Byelikova, Y. (2024). Challenges of Ukrainian Refugees in Germany: Resources for Women’s Empowerment Yuliya Byelikova. Migration and Diversity 3 (1): 51-69.
Carling, J. & Collins, F. (2018). Aspiration, Desire and Drivers of Migration. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 44 (6), 2018, 909-926.
Müller-Funk, L., Üstübici, A. & Belloni, M. (2023): Daring to Aspire:
Theorising Aspirations in Contexts of Displacement and Highly Constrained Mobility. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 49 (15): 3816-3835.
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) (2024). Ukraine Refugee Situation, accessed 15 Feb. 2024, available at: https://data.unhcr.org/en/situations/ukraine
[1] The protection is temporary and many participants struggle with its temporary nature. Participants do not know what will happen in the future. Thus, the term “settle” might be used in quotation marks.