Families in Flux: Ukrainian Wartime Migration to and from Poland, 2022–2023

• In Event: The Impact of the Russia-Ukraine War on Ukrainian Society

Abstract

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Poland continues to host one of the largest numbers of displaced persons, 90 percent of whom are women and children. Yet, despite Poland’s support, and against existing migration scholarship that finds refugees less likely to go back to their places of origin as conflicts endure, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians are leaving Poland each month to return to their home country, at least temporarily. What are the drivers and consequences of this cross-border movement, which risks exposing women, and in some cases their children, to the very threats they initially fled? Conversely, what motivates Ukrainian refugees to remain in Poland and with what implications? Drawing on four months of ethnographic fieldwork between 2022–23, including 51 in-depth interviews with 38 Ukrainian women currently or formerly seeking refuge in Kraków, this paper finds that perceptions about maternal responsibilities, mediated by household relations, critically structure decisions around (im)mobility. Whereas some women remain in Poland, protecting children from war but prolonging family separation, others view family reunification as a critical means of enacting motherhood, bringing their children across the border, even if briefly, to reconnect with their fathers and other relatives. I argue that although cross-border movement facilitates family maintenance against the backdrop of an ongoing war—a unique opportunity in contrast to the sedentarist and nationally-bounded responses to refugee management that dominate in the international system—, the possibility of return can also generate tensions in migrant households about how best to navigate available migratory options.

Author

• Natasha P. Bluth, UCLA