Returning to a country at war does not mean returning to one’s former life. A new study by the team at the Center for Research on Social Change and Mobility (CRASH) at Kozminski University shows that Ukrainian women returning from Poland to Kyiv bring back not only migration experience, but also new competences, values, and aspirations - and increasingly become agents of social change in their country.
Four years have now passed since Russia’s full-scale aggression against Ukraine. Millions of people remain outside the country’s borders, yet at the same time the number of those deciding to return is growing. According to data from the International Organization for Migration, more than 1.5 million Ukrainians have already returned to their homeland. This return, however, does not mean a simple return to the previous life. It takes place in a reality profoundly transformed by war - socially, economically, and institutionally.
What does reintegration look like after the experience of migration under conditions of an ongoing conflict? What does it mean to return to a city that has changed - just like the people who left it? What resources do returning migrant women bring, and how do they affect their surroundings?
These questions are addressed by a new study conducted by the team of the Center for Research on Social Change and Mobility (CRASH) at Kozminski University by Dr Ivanna Kyliushyk and Emil Chróla, carried out as part of the BigMig project led by Prof. Izabela Grabowska. The study focuses on Ukrainian women who, after a period of living and working in Poland, decided to return to Kyiv. An analysis of their experiences makes it possible to capture both the process of re-embedding in the country of origin and the mechanisms of transferring knowledge, norms, and social practices between different migration contexts.
Returning during wartime
Decisions to return rarely result from a single factor. Most often, they are the outcome of intertwining family, emotional, identity-related, and practical motivations. Among the most important are the need to live together with loved ones again, the desire to raise children in Ukraine, a sense of belonging to the country, and fatigue with a prolonged status of temporariness abroad. Economic considerations are also significant, as are caregiving obligations toward older family members and the need to participate in the future of one’s own state.
At the same time, war shapes every aspect of return - from access to work to the everyday sense of safety and life stability. Reintegration takes place under conditions of uncertainty, which affects both life decisions and professional plans.
Return as a transforming experience
The study shows that return migration is not a return to the starting point. It is a process of profound transformation that involves both the individual and their social environment. Women return with new skills, a different way of perceiving work, social relations, and their own agency. At the same time, they must negotiate these new resources in a different social and institutional context.
The migration experience often strengthens a sense of autonomy, interpersonal and intercultural competences, and readiness to redefine one’s life goals. However, return is also associated with the loss of some earlier social ties and the need to rebuild networks of contacts. Attempts to transfer new norms and practices to the return environment are not always met with full acceptance - sometimes they become a source of tensions or misunderstanding.
Return migration thus proves to be a two-way process. Migrant women adapt to the changed reality, but at the same time they themselves become a factor of change in their surroundings.
Between potential and barriers in the labour market
This is particularly evident in the professional sphere. Migration experience increases the competence capital of returning women - covering new qualifications, familiarity with different organisational cultures, different work standards, and higher expectations toward institutions. At the same time, using these resources in Ukraine is not always easy. Migrant women point to the limited “transferability” of the experience gained, differences in organisational structures, or institutional constraints of a labour market operating under wartime conditions.
Transfer of values and social practices
Returns also mean the flow of norms and social patterns. Migrant women bring into their environment’s new communication styles, a different approach to work-life balance, a different understanding of family roles, or a stronger orientation toward individual autonomy. These changes can be inspiring for the surroundings, but they may also lead to tensions resulting from differences in expectations and experiences.
Agents of social change
The study results indicate that returning migrant women increasingly play the role of intermediaries between different social orders. They transfer experiences, patterns of action, and ways of organising life that gradually influence local environments - especially in the labour market and social relations. Return migration therefore becomes not only an individual experience, but also a process of potential social change.
Between empowerment and burden
Return, however, brings ambivalent consequences. On the one hand, it strengthens a sense of agency, broadens horizons, and leads to redefining life priorities. On the other hand, it is associated with significant psychosocial costs - chronic stress, a sense of uncertainty, family tensions, or the experience of “being in-between” different social worlds. Return migration simultaneously builds new resources and generates new lines of tension in the biographies of returning women.
About the study
The study constitutes a qualitative component of the second stage of the BigMig project. Individual in-depth interviews were conducted with returning migrant women from Poland to Kyiv, focusing on the experience of social and professional reintegration, the transfer of social practices and values, individual return trajectories, and functioning under wartime conditions. The BigMig project analyses international mobility as a process of the flow of knowledge, competences, and intangible resources, combining qualitative and quantitative analyses in the study of contemporary migrations. The qualitative study involved 20 Ukrainian women (average age: 38 years; range: 25-46), who had stayed in Poland for an average of 2.1 years and have been living in Ukraine again for about 1.5 years; it was a highly educated sample who before migration held professional and managerial positions, and after return functioned in diversified sectors (administration, NGOs, education, culture, entrepreneurship, etc.). The study was carried out by the team of the Center for Research on Social Change and Mobility (CRASH) at Kozminski University - Dr Ivanna Kyliushyk and Emil Chróla - as part of the BigMig project: Digital and analog traces of migrants in big and small data sets and human capabilities, led by Prof. Izabela Grabowska.
About the Center for Research on Social Change and Mobility (CRASH)
The Center for Research on Social Change and Mobility (CRASH) takes a close look at the concepts of social change and the mobility that often accompanies it, examining them in an interdisciplinary way and inviting researchers from various disciplines from all over the world into this process. By combining qualitative and quantitative research methods of the social sciences, we undertake empirical research on critical social problems in Poland, Central and Eastern Europe, in relation to a broader social context. We take into account phenomena such as globalisation, migration, the pandemic, economic changes, and new technologies, which directly shape and transform various areas of human life and entire societies. In the coming years, the Center for Research on Social Change and Mobility will investigate social, behavioural, and economic issues related to human mobility, the quality and nature of work, the structure and flow of organisations, and social life in response to national and global processes of socio-economic transformation. https://www.kozminski.edu.pl/pl/centrum-badan-nad-zmiana-spoleczna-i-mobilnoscia-crash
Contact person:
Dr Ivanna Kyliushyk
Kozminski University
CRASH Center for Research on Social Change and Mobility