Thinking About Going Back Home in War: Surveying Ukrainian Refugees in the Czech Republic

• In Event: Migration and Return amid Conflict and Resettlement in the Post-Soviet Space

Abstract

Within weeks of the start of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 Ukrainians came to constitute the largest population of refugees globally and in recent history. As astonishing as the sudden size of the recorded refugee population of 7.9 million, is Ukrainian refugees’ incredible mobility amid war: nearly 16 million border crossings were recorded out of Ukraine in 2022 alone, and more than 8 million Ukrainians crossed the border back into the conflict state in the same year according to the UN Refugee Agency.

This paper presents results of an innovative survey among Ukrainian refugees in the Czech Republic, which sought to identify the most salient and important factors surrounding decision-making around return. What role does political identity and belonging play in the return considerations of Ukrainian refuges? To answer these questions, I developed an innovative experimental survey fielded among a representative sample of Ukrainian refugees (n~1,000) in the Czech Republic in the Fall of 2024. Respondents were presented with randomized hypothetical scenarios and asked about their choice between remaining and returning under these scenarios. The experimental design allowed me to empirically isolate the salience of different conditions in the country of refuge (housing situation, economic integration and refugees' social integration) as well as in Ukraine (security situation, Ukrainian policies towards refugees).

This analysis offers an important and timely methodologically contribution to wider studies of refugee return decision-making as well as to the ongoing policy debates around the future of EU policies towards Ukrainian refugees.

Author

• Matej Jungwirth, Northwestern U