, Assistant Professor of Social Work, and , PhD Candidate, Sociology,
As millions of refugees flee Ukraine as a result of the Russian invasion, one question that has been raised is: Why have Ukrainians been welcomed into eastern Europe, unlike Syrians, Iraqis, Afghans and Eritreans? Is it because they are white?
Criticisms imply that the European Union treats refugees from the Global South differently, and that . Critics also highlight that Romania and Poland鈥檚 hospitality to Ukrainians stands in .
Yet hasty interpretations that single out race as the primary force in refugee favouritism simplify geopolitical realities. They also ignore the .
Europe rests on a , with older EU members at the top of the pile followed by new members, and then countries being considered for membership in the EU. At the bottom of the pile is everyone else.
Geopolitics play a role
Commitments to welcoming and are linked to these countries鈥� geographical proximity to the Ukrainian border.
Refugees usually head to the closest safe place. Think of the Syrian war: neighbouring Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan resettled the largest number of Syrians. .
Similarly, more than half of Eritrean refugees are in . Bangladesh also hosts the majority of .
Ethnic composition and regional labour market flows also play a role. Poland is the . By the end of 2020, a record number of had migrated to Poland for work.
In Ukraine, . The is an ethnically based political party with a seat in the national parliament.
Ukrainians regularly cross regional borders for personal reasons, such as accessing or visiting family.
Pre-existing affinities
Eastern Europe shares a common and after the end of the Cold War in 1989, an . With the fall of the Berlin Wall, most eastern European states . Integration into the West and the adoption of liberal ideas of freedom, free market and democracy, have become synonymous with opposing Russian neo-imperialism.
Solidarity based on a is common across . A shared memory of Russian aggression makes the pain of Ukrainians more intelligible .
Linguistic similarities between Ukrainian and Polish make Poland more accessible to Ukrainian migrants. Both languages are Slavic and . The Polish and Ukrainians .
Most countries . Not only is Christian Orthodoxy intertwined with but Orthodoxy has also since the fall of Communism. In Ukraine, .
Ukraine鈥檚 position
Ukraine is not a member of the EU, but it is a signatory to the and the .
The 2014 Association Agreement was key in defining Ukraine as a European country with shared common history and values. It also paved the way for , which comprises all the EU members except Ireland, as well as Norway, Iceland, Switzerland and Lichtenstein, for up to 90 days.
Both agreements outline the foreign policy expectations of countries on the path to EU integration. These agreements legally produce different categories of migrants. Ukrainians are on the path to integration into the European labour market, unlike , defined as non-citizens without the right to free movement in the EU.
Through a budget of , the ENP supports economic and social reforms for neighbouring countries of the EU including Algeria, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Egypt, Georgia, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Moldova, Morocco, the Palestinian Authority, Syria, Tunisia and Ukraine.
Since 2014, the ENP has funnelled more than to help Ukraine鈥檚 path to EU integration. Ukraine has received , inclusive of financial supports for the COVID-19 pandemic.
Fortress Europe
With central and eastern European member states , eastern Europe has became the bordering outskirts of the EU. And so recent refugee flows have to be managed in the peripheral east, now tasked with and keeping refugees out.
In contrast to the warm welcome granted to Ukrainian refugees, Poland has recently let at its eastern border. It was the EU that tripled the border management funds to Latvia, Lithuania and Poland to , and increase border push-backs and detentions.
听
Citizenship or race?
The mistreatment of foreign nationals fleeing Ukraine .
鈥淏lack people鈥� and 鈥淎frican students鈥� are terms interchangeably those being held back at borders or being prevented from boarding evacuation buses.
Ukraine has continued the former Soviet tradition of regularly recruiting Global South students within the medical field. India, Morocco, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Nigeria, China, Turkey, Egypt, Israel and Uzbekistan are the top .
Much of eastern Europe is made out of racially homogeneous countries, where non-citizens are often visibly non-white. Using a racial lens to understand how borders respond to the attempts of international students to cross them diverts attention from citizenship regimes in allocating rights.
It also minimizes the larger problem at hand 鈥� the precarious status of temporary residents, including international students, who inhabit a marginal position by bureaucratic design.
Citizenship becomes the primary basis of exclusion. It is a related phenomenon that citizenship gets descriptively associated with race.
We do not intend to legitimize the that has surfaced in relation to the Ukrainian refugee crisis.
Race does matter in refugee favouritism. But the opening of refugee corridors to Ukraine鈥檚 neighbours has little to do with race and more to do with geopolitical and citizenship regimes that determine freedom of movement within Europe.
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