Ukrainian refugees of the period of the Russian-Ukrainian war in NATO countries: the geopolitical context of the military migration crisis

ABSTRACT

The Russian-Ukrainian war is being waged on the territory of Ukraine, but it is of global importance. One of the aspects of the war is the mass migration of Ukrainians abroad. The causes and features of migration are explained in the global geopolitical context. In recent years, war refugees have become increasingly important in world migration flows. This testifies to the crisis of the world order that arose in the early 1990s. The uniqueness of the flow of refugees from Ukraine is its extraordinary size, speed of movement, gender and age imbalance, the predominance of urban residents with a high level of education. In the future, this prepares for Ukraine a demographic catastrophe and difficulties in the post-war reconstruction of the country. The author concludes that a solution to the Ukrainian military migration crisis can be found in the context of changes in the post-war world order.

RÉSUMÉ

La guerre russo-ukrainienne se déroule sur le territoire de l’Ukraine, mais elle est d’une importance mondiale. L’un des aspects de la guerre est la migration massive d’Ukrainiens à l’étranger. Les causes et les caractéristiques de la migration sont expliquées dans le contexte géopolitique mondial. Ces dernières années, les réfugiés de guerre sont devenus de plus en plus importants dans les flux migratoires mondiaux. Cela témoigne de la crise de l’ordre mondial apparue au début des années 1990. Le caractère unique du flux de réfugiés en provenance d’Ukraine est sa taille extraordinaire, sa vitesse de déplacement, son déséquilibre entre les sexes et l’âge, la prédominance de résidents urbains ayant un niveau d’éducation élevé. À l’avenir, cela prépare l’Ukraine à une catastrophe démographique et à des difficultés dans la reconstruction d’après-guerre du pays. L’auteur conclut qu’une solution à la crise migratoire militaire ukrainienne peut être trouvée dans le contexte des changements de l’ordre mondial d’après-guerre.

KEYWORDS:

• Ukraine
• The European Union
• Poland
• Russian Federation
• refugees
• war
• “mass emigration”
• “conflict-induced displacement”

Acknowledgements

The article was prepared in preparation for the international conference GLOBAL CONSEQUENCES OF DISPLACEMENT FROM RUSSIA'S INVASION OF UKRAINE: SPACE, PLACE AND PLURALISM (November 3–4, 2022b Ottawa). I am grateful to Professor Milana Nikolko for the invitation to participate in this conference, as well as for valuable advice and editing and translation of the text of my report and article. I also express my gratitude to Professor Suzy Harris-Brandt for her help in translating the text of my report. I would like to express my gratitude to the anonymous reviewers of the article, who, with their comments and suggestions, helped to improve the text. I sincerely thank Tanya Chour for the final literary edition of my text.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 Art. 7 stipulates: “The language of the educational process in educational institutions shall be the state language. < … > Members of national minorities of Ukraine shall be guaranteed the right to obtain pre-school and primary education in community educational institutions in the language of the corresponding national minority, along with the state language. This right shall be implemented by creating separate classes (groups) providing learning in the language of the corresponding national minority, along with the state language, and shall not apply to classes (groups) providing learning in Ukrainian”.

2 Among Ukrainian research centers, preference is given to the Institute of Sociology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS), and the Ukrainian Center for Economic and Political Research named after O. Razumkov (Razumkov Center). All the mentioned organizations have been working for more than 30 years and have a solid scientific reputation (KIIS, 2023; Institute of Sociology, 2023; Razumkov Center, 2023). The data of the Polish Interdisciplinary Laboratory for the Study of the War in Ukraine, which was created and operates under the leadership of Prof. Piotr Dlugosh in Krakow. This scientific center has been active since the beginning of the war and conducts systematic research involving Ukrainian scientists. The laboratory uses both quantitative and qualitative methods of obtaining primary sociological information (Interdyscyplinarne Laboratorium, 2023). The study of Polish sociologists Przemysław Sadura and Sławomir Serakowski provides valuable information about the dynamics of the attitude of Poles toward Ukrainian refugees (Sierakowski & Sadura, 2022). This study was carried out using qualitative methods and provides insight into the motives behind the activities of ordinary Poles. In general, the amount of data used allows seeing the studied phenomenon stereoscopically.

3 I have cited these long quotes from the Razumkov Center Report because of their informativeness.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Illia Kononov

Illia Kononov is visiting professor at Carleton University (Ottawa, Canada) and Professor of the Department of Philosophy and Sociology of Luhansk Taras Shevchenko National University (Poltava, Ukraine). His research focuses on the modern warfare as a factor in changing international relations, the Russian-Ukrainian war, the social consequences of war. His previous research has focused on inter-regional and inter-ethnic relations in Ukraine, on the problem of democratic changes in Ukraine.