Housing refugees from Ukraine: preliminary insights and learnings from the local response in five European cities

ABSTRACT

The Russian war of aggression against Ukraine caused an escape of >7 million people to other European countries. In this extreme context, the accommodation of refugees has been an urgent need and an unexpected challenge for the host cities and societies. This short paper discusses insights and learnings on housing and accommodation of Ukraine war refugees at the local scale. It summarises challenges within the general management of (housing) integration, discusses related learnings from the hitherto coping mechanisms and sheds light on policy implications for the future by embedding the migration challenge of Ukrainian refugees into a wider context.

KEYWORDS:

• Refugee migration
• Ukraine
• local housing integration
• European cities
• housing challenges
• comparative perspective

Acknowledgements

This article is based on research that was financed by the project HOUSE-IN, a European project on challenges at the intersection of housing and integration of migrants in cities funded within the JPI Urban Europe Call “Urban Migration”. Full title: The Housing-Integration-Nexus: shaping exchange and innovation for migrants’ access to housing and social inclusion (June 2021-Nov 2022); https://jpi-urbaneurope.eu/project/house-in/ (accessed on 20 Oct 2022).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. https://data.unhcr.org/en/situations/ukraine, accessed on 20 Oct 2022; Temporary Protection Directive (TPD; Council Directive 2001/55/EC). https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/policies/migration-and-asylum/common-european-asylum-system/temporary-protection_en. (accessed on 20 Oct 2022)

2. HOUSE-IN (June 2021-Nov 2022) was a European project on challenges at the intersection of housing and integration of migrants in cities funded within the JPI Urban Europe Call ‘Urban Migration’. Full title: The Housing-Integration-Nexus: shaping exchange and innovation for migrants’ access to housing and social inclusion; https://jpi-urbaneurope.eu/project/house-in/. (accessed on 20 Oct 2022)

3. This is not applicable to Sweden.

4. https://theconversation.com/ukraine-refugee-crisis-exposes-racism-and-contradictions-in-the-definition-of-human−179150, Howard et al. (2022) or https://www.asileproject.eu/receiving-ukrainian-refugees-in-the-eu-a-case-of-solidarity/. (accessed on 15 Feb 2023)

5. https://www.medico.de/en/selective-solidarity−18594 (accessed on 15 March 2023), Karageorgiou and Noll (2022): https://www.asileproject.eu/receiving-ukrainian-refugees-in-the-eu-a-case-of-solidarity/. (accessed on 20 March 2023)

6. For Germany see https://www.akp-redaktion.de/kommunalpolitik-und-der-ukraine-krieg/and https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/innenpolitik/container-fluechtlinge−101.html. (both accessed on 24 March 2023)

7. On the school situation of Ukrainian refugees, see: https://eurocities.eu/latest/ukrainian-children-are-back-to-school-in-eu-cities/. (accessed on 7 Nov 2022)

8. COUNCIL IMPLEMENTING DECISION (EU) 2022/382 of 4 March 2022, establishing the existence of a mass influx of displaced persons from Ukraine within the meaning of Article 5 of Directive 2001/55/EC, and having the effect of introducing temporary protection. (accessed on 5 June 2023).

9. https://gchumanrights.org/gc-preparedness/preparedness-migration/article-detail/selective-solidarity-and-discrimination-in-the-eu-response-to-refugees.html. (accessed on 15 March 2023)