Integration of refugees from Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia (INFLUX)
This project provides policy-relevant research on the integration of refugees from Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia into the Baltic and Nordic states. It examines how Ukrainian, Russian, and Belarusian refugees are received, settled, and integrated into their host societies.
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, millions of migrants from Ukraine have been displaced to neighboring countries. A large number of migrants from Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus have entered the Nordic and the Baltic countries.
The project aims to study the key areas of governance structures and reception facilities, social and educational support for children and families, and integrational labor market outcomes of Ukrainian-Russian-Belarusian (URB) migrants in the short-, medium-, and long-term in Nordic and Baltic countries. By understanding these dynamics, the project seeks to improve related integration policies in the host countries.
INFLUX examines this problem in five countries in the Nordics and Baltics: Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, and Lithuania.
In the Nordics, where the majority of previous refugee flows have originated from further afield, there appears to be a change in the overall reception and integration structures in response to the Ukrainians, who are geographically and culturally closer to Nordic countries. Parallelly, the Baltic states are in a new position as migrant destinations and have launched ad hoc structures supported by civil society to establish accommodation and integration mechanisms.
Across these highly different contexts, the sudden influx of Ukrainian, Russian and Belarusian migrants has strained existing reception structures and challenged integration capacities. It is therefore of crucial importance to understand how these states have responded to the abrupt new migration dynamics, and the related outcomes for the migrants.
This work was supported by NordForsk through the funding to Influx of Ukrainian, Russian and Belarusian Migrants: Integration and Governance Dynamics in Nordic and Baltic States, project number 161678.
Read more about the project (cmi.no)
Principal Investigator (PI)
Project members
Partners
- CMI (Chr. Michelsen Institute)
- Stockholm University
- Tampere universities
- University of Tartu
- University of Turku
- Umeå University