The National Interest, September 3, 2023
Following last year’s Russian invasion, millions of Ukrainians fled to countries across Europe and beyond. What distinguishes this group from other refugee flows, however, is its unusual gender distribution: most refugee arrivals have been women. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy barred men aged eighteen to sixty from leaving the country so they would be available for military service. As a result, the share of women among adult Ukrainian refugees is close to 70 percent in most host countries.
This is in contrast with other refugee flows; for example, women only made up 30 percent of all asylum applications during the 2015-17 refugee crisis in Europe. Other data provided by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) show that women accounted for slightly less than half of all those protected and/or assisted by the refugee agency in 2022.
We can refer to a “feminization” of refugees in the Ukrainian context. The term feminization of migration was coined to note not so much an increase in the proportion or numbers of female migrants but the emergence of a new form of female migration in the early 1980s: women were migrating independently to seek jobs abroad (rather than joining their husbands) and were becoming the main income providers for their families.
Ukrainian refugee women who fled without their husbands are faced with new responsibilities. They have to manage alone and find employment while taking care of dependent family members who traveled with them (mainly children and elderly people and, in some cases, people with special needs), while also supporting family members who stayed behind. These challenges can become overwhelming; some end up choosing to return, trading safety in a foreign land for the familiarity of home. Ten percent of all Ukrainian refugees who left following the February 2022 Russian attack have returned home from abroad, according to the International Organization for Migration.
Welcoming Ukrainian women refugees in Europe or the United States and giving them access to the labor market does not necessarily ensure their economic integration. Challenges such as the breakdown of the family unit, limited access to adequate and affordable childcare, social isolation, an employment-education mismatch, overqualification or lack of qualifications and skills, lack of recognition of degrees, etc., can hinder the success of these women in their host countries.
Ukrainians who fled their country benefitted from immediate labor market access in Europe and the United States. To avoid overwhelming the standard asylum system and for faster protection rights, the European Commission decided to give a “temporary protection” status to nationals of Ukraine which entails a residence permit, access to employment, housing, social welfare, medical care, education, etc. Across the Atlantic, the U.S. government launched a program called “Uniting for Ukraine” to offer Ukrainians a chance to come to the United States outside the regular refugee resettlement program under “humanitarian parole” for an initial period of two years. Ukrainian parolees in the United States are eligible for employment authorization and Social Security numbers, as well as federal assistance and refugee resettlement benefits. The same benefits are available to those with Temporary Protected Status (TPS), which was recently extended to many more Ukrainians in the United States.
This parallelism is interesting. Both the European Union and the U.S. government offered fast and efficient protection modes to Ukrainian nationals outside the regular refugee system. This is quite telling about how the current refugee system is becoming obsolete.
Two Oxford professors, Alexander Betts and Paul Collier, have written extensively about the existing broken refugee system and called to transform it and render it fit for the twenty-first century. They explain in their book Refuge: Rethinking Refugee Policy in a Changing World how important it is to provide refugees with opportunities for human flourishing (jobs, training, etc.), rather than seeing them as inevitably dependent upon humanitarian assistance. Those employment opportunities and newly acquired skills can also empower refugees when they return home to rebuild their country—a return very much encouraged by the Ukrainian government, which is providing grants for businesses to stimulate job creation and rebuild the workforce. Zelensky recently declared: “Without people coming back, we will not have a strong economy.” His government is betting on attractive job opportunities to act as a pull factor and encourage returns.
While many have done just that, permanent return doesn’t seem to be on the agenda for most Ukrainians. The idea that “all Ukrainians want to return home” is not supported by data on migration intentions. Even prior to last year’s invasion, one in four adults in Ukraine wished to migrate, according to researchers from the Clingendael Institute. The desired destinations were mostly in the EU, but non-EU countries such as the United States and Canada were also on the list. Moreover, research focusing on re-migration patterns teaches us that “it is in fact women and children who have a relatively low probability of returning, especially the longer the war lasts and children put down roots at school.” That is the exact demographic composition of Ukrainian refugees.
As the Ukrainian crisis kept stretching in time and space, a shift from crisis management and short-term measures to long-term policy and support was in order. With this in mind, the U.S. government has set up a new public-private initiative and signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with “Tent Partnership for Refugees” to support employment opportunities and economic integration for refugees generally. “Tent” is a business coalition made up of more than 300 multinational companies committed to supporting refugees through hiring, training, and mentorship. This partnership seeks to mobilize U.S. and international businesses and corporations to connect refugees (including Ukrainians) to employment opportunities in the United States and other hosting countries. It also underlines the importance of shared responsibility, which is one of the main ideas behind the United Nations Global Compact on Refugees.
As time passes, Europe’s integration capacities, including job markets, education, housing, etc., could reach their limits. Aside from those who choose to return home, many Ukrainians will want to migrate onward looking for better opportunities or to join family members scattered farther around the world. We know that diasporas attract onward migration; with hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians on U.S. soil (old and new arrivals), more and more Ukrainians will want to join them. Some 355,000 Ukrainian immigrants were living in the United States as of 2019, and at least 300,000 Ukrainian refugees made it here in the last eighteen months.
It is important to follow up on key measures that are meant to help refugees help themselves. The feminization of Ukrainian refugees means additional initiatives will need to be put in place to ensure the social and economic integration of this particular group. For example, is the MOU initiated by the Biden administration bearing fruit? Is it specifically targeting Ukrainian women who are facing numerous challenges on their own? Is the international community making sure that newly acquired skills developed through vocational training could be reinvested by these women when they return to their country and participate in its reconstruction when the time comes? To attain success in their host countries or back home, these women need more than open borders and job markets.