Mobility and labor market trajectories of Ukrainian migrants to Poland in the context of the 2014 Russian invasion of Ukraine

ABSTRACT

The 2014 Russian invasion of Ukraine resulted, among other things, in a dramatic increase in Ukrainian emigration to Europe, particularly to Poland. The article evaluates its consequences, by confronting trajectories of pre- and post- 2014 war male and female Ukrainian migrants to Poland. The comparisons combine mobility and migrants’ labor market paths linked to employment sectors. On data from surveys conducted in two Polish cities – Warsaw and Wrocław – in 2018-2019, we performed sequence analysis revealing seven clusters of trajectories, serving as a dependent variable in the multinomial regression analysis. We found that the war context contributed to the growth of permanency in Ukrainian migration, challenging a temporary mobility model observed in Ukraine-to-Poland migration for over two decades, which involves demographic consequences for Ukrainian society. In Poland, post-2014 war migrants are more likely than earlier cohorts to work in the new migrant niches, but contribute also to the revitalization of old ones. All of this contributes to structural changes in the Polish labor market. Importantly, we did not find evidence for a refugee penalty in economic integration, which we link to the mix of economic and humanitarian drivers of post-war Ukrainian migration to Poland.

KEYWORDS:

• Ukraine; Poland; migrants
• mobility patterns
• refugees
• labor market trajectories

Disclosure statement

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

Data availability statement

The authors do not own the data and do not have copyrights for sharing the data. The data ownerships remain with National Bank of Poland for which the Centre of Migration Research in Warsaw did a study described in the article. Consequently, we could not deposit data in any repository. We prepared a replication package (but without data) which can be found online: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/UQME5

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Ethical approval

The surveys analyzed in the article were approved by the Research Ethic Committee of Centre of Migration Research, University of Warsaw (approval no. CMR/EC/08/2022). The code of ethics in the surveys was evaluated after the research, as the ethic approval was not required in Poland at the moment they were conducted (this is confirmed in the ethnical approval, available upon request). All participants have provided informed consent to take part in the survey by contacting the researchers by phone (making a call or sending an SMS requesting the contact) to make an appointment for an interview, and by coming to the research site for an interview.

Notes

1 Eurostat data (MIGR_RESFIRST); https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat.

2 Data on trends in the years 2005-21 for selected documents for work and temporary residence permits issued in Poland and applications for a refugee status for all foreigners and Ukrainians are presented in Figures A1-A4 in the supplementary material.

3 We refer to data on regions, as data on documents issued in cities are not publicly available.

4 More details on the sampling procedure are provided in the supplementary material.

5 The RDS method does not pose firm geographical boundaries, as recruitment is in the hands of the respondents. However, since respondents are asked to come to the research site in the city center, only those living within reach of public transportation are usually inclined to participate in the research.

6 However, due to small numbers of cases especially in the pre-2008 cohort these observations should be interpreted with care.

7 Referring also to the significant effect of enrolment to Polish studies described earlier.