Between Agency and Betrayal: Ukrainian Women Refugees and the Double Bind of Deservingness

• In Event: Peace, War, and Social Conflict Section Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Peace, War, and Social Conflict Roundtable #3: Violence and Governance

Abstract

How do war refugees position themselves within discourses of deservingness in contemporary migration-sensitive political contexts? Drawing on 40 in-depth Zoom interviews with Ukrainian female refugees in Germany, we reconceptualize deservingness as a reflexive self-understanding embedded in multiple evaluative regimes, rather than a category imposed solely by states, institutions, and host societies. We show that refugees assess their own deservingness through two conflicting evaluative frameworks: how they believe the host society judges them and how they imagine compatriots back home morally evaluate their departure. Within the former framework, our interviewee’s self-views diverge sharply from dominant deservingness rationales documented previously as institutionally reinforced. While these rationales tend to distinguish “deserving” refugees (legitimated through perceived victimhood, lack of control, and immediate danger) from “undeserving” economic migrants (delegitimized due to perceived self-interest), Ukrainians instead frame their deservingness in the host society in terms of agency – economic performance, self-sufficiency, and civic responsibility – while distancing themselves from the notion of victimhood. The sending society’s imagined standards invert this logic: in the context of wartime national solidarity, legitimate flight is tied to constrained agency, direct life threats, and victimization, whereas leaving in pursuit of economic benefits or improved life chances may be construed as morally suspect (unpatriotic). Because many refugees in Germany cannot easily situate themselves within the victim/interest-driven dichotomy, they experience moral insecurity across both evaluative frameworks. These frameworks also contradict one another, placing refugees in a moral double bind: they feel pressured to embody both victimhood and economic productivity. The emotional discomfort resulting from these persistent tensions generates distinct rhetorical strategies, which we identify as indicators of morally driven social action.

Authors

• Anna Popovych, University of Wisconsin-Madison

• Theodore P. Gerber, University of Wisconsin-Madison