The afterlives of the ‘migration crisis’ and its hidden labours
Ukrainian displacement post-2022
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 24227206 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Daria Krivonos (0000-0003-1393-1464, University of Helsinki) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Publication date | 2026-10-12 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Environment and Planning D Society and Space (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0263-7758 • E-ISSN: 1472-3433 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/02637758261492963 |
| OpenAlex | W7221507656 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 64 |
Migration has become increasingly synonymous with ‘crisis’. Drawing on longitudinal ethnographic fieldwork with Ukrainian nationals in Warsaw (2020–2025), this article asks what ‘crisis times’ mean for migration research methodologically and what remains obscured when forced displacement is narrated as crisis. It contributes to debates on the temporalities and geographies of crisis by engaging critiques of the ‘migration crisis industry’ alongside post-colonial, critical race and feminist perspectives that re-read crisis as ordinariness and duress. The article argues that crisis frameworks not only reproduce state emergencies but also shape knowledge production, delimiting what becomes knowable. Framing crisis as a time-bound event normalises slow and protracted forms of harm that operate beyond emergency frameworks and risk remaining invisibilised. While Ukrainian displacement initially generated accounts of rapid solidarity and ‘unprecedented’ responses, war fatigue and shrinking humanitarian funding have shifted crisis management onto migrant communities themselves, rendering crisis slow, ordinary and prolonged. Moving beyond exceptionalist understandings, the article shows how crisis becomes embedded in daily routines of communal care among displaced individuals and communities. Finally, it calls for longitudinal ethnography and practices of ‘ethnographic returning’ to bear witness to the long-term unfolding of harms that endure beyond the spectacular.
communal care · crisis framing · forced displacement · humanitarian funding · longitudinal ethnography · migration crisis · protracted displacement · Ukrainian refugees · war fatigue · Migration and Exile Studies · Migration, Racism, and Human Rights · Migration, Refugees, and Integration
Social Reproduction Theory
Making Space for Failure in Geographic Research
Minority Women and Austerity
Cruel Optimism
Global polycrisis
Social Reproduction in the Making
Everyday Exposure
The Death of Asylum
Illegality, Inc
The Anti-Politics of Inclusion
‘How did you get in?’ Research access and sovereign power during the ‘migration crisis’ in Greece
Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor
Do no harm? The impact of policy on migration scholarship
Slow violence and toxic geographies
Interrogating the Mediterranean ‘Migration Crisis’
Refugees as Surplus Population
Migration, knowledge production and the humanitarian agenda in times of crisis
The social reproductive worlds of migrants
Selective Hospitality
Depoliticization “from Below”
The ‘crisis’ of white hegemony, neonationalist femininities and antiracist feminism
Crisis, What Crisis? Immigrants, Refugees, and Invisible Struggles
Departheid in the Post‐Soviet Space? The Shifting Geopolitics and Racialisation of Migration Governance in Lithuania
Black Women in the United States and Unpaid Collective Work
The Re(production) of Restless Bodies
Qualitative longitudinal methodologies for crisis times
The humanitarian infrastructure and the question of over‐research
Longitudinal reflections on the slow and fast crisis of domestic violence during Covid ‐19
The Ukrainian Refugee “Crisis” and the (Re)production of Whiteness in Austrian and Czech Public Politics
Vagabond Capitalism and the Necessity of Social Reproduction
The evolution of EUropean border governance through crisis
What remains
Homes for Ukraine’ and the politics of private humanitarian hospitality
Pluralizing social reproduction approaches
Slow emergencies
Humanitarian capitalism
To live and let die
Migration Crisis Revisited
Crisis as Method
Migration discipline hijacked
The local labour building the international community
Learning from Disaster
Racial capitalism and the production of difference in Helsinki and Warsaw
Ethnographic Returning, Qualitative Longitudinal Research and the Reflexive Analysis of Social Practice
The ordinariness of life-making in displacement
A study of disillusionment in Polish families hosting refugees from Ukraine in 2022
On plantations, prisons, and a black sense of place
Forum
Care as political revolution
Disappointment and awkwardness as ugly feelings
Distributed humanitarianism
Elusive privilege
| Highly cited | No |
|---|