Elusive privilege

Class, race and gender in Ukrainian war migrants' (un)employment in France

Bibliographic Data

ID2056885
AuthorsDenys Gorbach (0000-0003-3071-5480, Lund University, corresponding author), Yevheniia Polshchykova, Anastasiya Ryabchuk (0000-0002-1206-1279, National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy)
Year2024
Volume49
Issue4
Pages747-763
Publication date2024-11-25
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueDialectical Anthropology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0304-4092 • E-ISSN: 1573-0786
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1007/s10624-024-09754-8
OpenAlexW4404662254
LanguageEN
Citations received9
References cited26

What happens when the state removes the usual obstacles preventing refugees to 'integrate'? Our article analyses the case of Ukrainians who fled the war to settle in France. Their legal status is different from that of 'classic' refugees: the EU directive on temporary protection gives them the freedom to move and the right to work. Moreover, they benefit from a rather positive attitude of the general public. The absence of racist stereotypes and institutional barriers, however, does not translate into easy integration into the labour market: 2 years after the beginning of the Ukrainian exile, two thirds of the refugees in Western Europe remain unemployed. Based on our fieldwork made in three French regions from February to August 2023, we analyse the predicament of Ukrainian war migrants. We conclude that granting formal access to jobs and putting racist discrimination on pause is not enough to overcome other handicaps: lack of language and other 'soft' skills; lack of social capital that would allow insertion into formal and informal labour markets; the burden of social reproduction magnified by forced single motherhood; and the temporary nature of one's supposedly generous legal status. The latter turns the perceived privilege into a handicap: Ukrainians are tolerated temporarily and being increasingly differentiated into 'deserving' and 'undeserving', 'productive' and 'unproductive' migrants. While those deemed 'productive' may be encouraged to remain in the EU, those who fail to integrate into the labour market are likely to gradually be cut off from social support and forced to return to Ukraine

Class (philosophy · Political science · Privilege (computing · Race (biology · Sociology · Ukrainian · Diaspora, migration, transnational identity · Gender Studies · Law · Migration and Labor Dynamics · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy

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