Displacement in Compartments of Solidarity. Part 1

You are listening to Radio Unheard

Podcast for Cultural Professionals, where we explore the ethical dilemmas around the intersection of art and politics.

I'm your host, Asia Tsisar, and in this season, we're going to drown together in the Question of Solidarity.

Intro (Asia Tsisar): “The kind of war we're seeing here, we've seen in other places in the world, but what makes this one so upsetting is that the victims here are blonde and blue-eyed.”

This quote by the U.S. reporter, recreated by Aruna D'Souza in the first episode of this podcast [1], got stuck in my head.

As a person who lives in Europe, I remember the very same media discourse from the other perspective. During the first months of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, more than 6 million people became displaced and went to the nearest border seeking safety. This border, because of how geographically Ukraine is placed, happened to be the border of the European Union. To respond to such a scale of displacement, the EU activated a special regime called a Temporary Protection Directive [2] to allow all holders of Ukrainian passports to find asylum in any EU country.

This decision almost immediately sparked discourses, both in the media and among people, as it entered the field of a long-term fight for the rights of asylum seekers of other origins. When I was designing the idea of this podcast, I wanted to have the conversation about the legal divide created between displaced people from Ukraine and asylum seekers of other origins as one of the first topics.

But it turned out to be a conversation about political imaginaries, about narratives and structures that compartmentalize people and prevent solidarity, not only with displaced people, but also among people with the experience of displacement themselves.

This episode has two parts. The first one examines the protection mechanisms applied for Ukrainians in the EU and the reality it shapes for the people it protects. The second part [3] aims to place this problem in a broader context and examines the general trend of erosion of protection for displaced people worldwide.

Ruslana Koziienko: When we are discussing the widespread racial tropes when it comes to reception of displaced people from Ukraine across EU countries, it's very important to kind of disentangle different discourses — like media discourses, political discourses, also academic ones — and examine the reality of the reception of displaced people from Ukraine, and the reality of Temporary Protection and what it does to protection of displaced people in general, not only people from Ukraine.

Asia Tsisar: This voice belongs to Ruslana Koziienko, a Ukrainian social anthropologist and PhD candidate at the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at the Central European University in Vienna [4]. Together with Volga Biziukova and Anna Lazareva, Ruslana conducted two waves of interviews in 2022 and 2023 with Ukrainians who experienced displacement, as well as with NGOs, independent activists, and authorities involved in the reception of Ukrainian displaced people.

This research, titled “Arrival” Infrastructures: Processes of Emplacement of Displaced People from Ukraine in Vienna [5], was launched by IWM, the Institute for Human Science in Vienna, and directed by Professor Ayşe Çağlar.

While conducting this research, Ruslana also wrote an opinion piece, Against False Solidarity: A Call for True Solidarity Among People with Experiences of Displacement [6].

Ruslana Koziienko: So, especially for the first two years of the full-scale invasion, there were widespread narratives about how benevolent the reception of displaced people from Ukraine was. And this narrative of exceptionality in racial and cultural terms obscures how hegemonic power functions in general by creating divides between different groups.

So, International Protection — what is usually called the asylum system or refugee status, but also subsidiary protections — this protection was already there in place. But what the introduction of Temporary Protection did is that it created another status alongside those asylum seekers and offered this displaced person status under Temporary Protection. And I think that it kind of placed people who actually have a lot of common dynamics in their experience of displacement on different sides of these legal definitions and underlined the differences,

because it places them in very different conditions, but it prevents them from seeing the most common dynamics in their experiences and maybe from solidarizing with each other.

So, I think what impresses me still the most is the amount of misinterpretations and misrepresentations of Temporary Protection — of its benefits, of its consequences and implications — and misrecognition of what it actually does, not only to Ukrainians but also to displaced people in general, because it basically erodes the system of International Protection even further.

Asia Tsisar: Let's try to unpack the differences between the two regimes. So, can you explain to us what exactly the Temporary Protection Directive is, how it works, and how it is different from the other refugee statuses that exist in EU law?

Ruslana Koziienko: So, what is called the International Protection System goes back to the 1951 Refugee Convention [7]. And it is meant to protect people from persecution and harm. And it gives either refugee status or subsidiary protection status.

So, the way it functions is that, let's say, a person enters an EU country. They apply for asylum. At that point, they are considered an asylum seeker, and they wait. This waiting usually takes years because refugee status is granted on an individual basis, which means that each case of each displaced person is examined individually.

People usually wait in humiliating and demoralizing conditions in refugee camps. And this usually takes years. I mean, at least one year, two years. You never know. It's basically a person's life placed on hold for an indefinite time.

And the rate of acceptance of asylum applications is very different depending on the country that receives displaced people and on the nationality of those who flee danger.

So, it's very contextual, but it's also a very uncertain status in the sense that the person has to wait for years in humiliating conditions, and they have no certainty whether their application will be approved or not. So, there are many uncertainties in that status.

When the person receives refugee status, it's a status that gives her or him certainty. The certainty means that they have enough means to live upon, and they know that this is not a status that can be taken back. Very often, the status, if it is granted, allows a person to stay in the country enough years to eventually apply for citizenship.

Asia Tsisar: If you don't — if you get rejected and you don't have this status — basically, you are deported, right?

Ruslana Koziienko: Yeah, I mean, I described a kind of fortunate scenario. Of course, a bad scenario is when the person is not granted status. And then, yes, they are usually detained for a certain period of time in a camp.

And I really don't want to generalize. But basically, for the person, it means that sooner or later, they will be returned to the country where they might face harm or death or who knows what else.

I mean, it's important to mention that according to the 1951 Refugee Convention, the definition of a refugee is that: “It is a person who, owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside of the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country.”

What it means is that fleeing a war alone does not automatically make someone a refugee under the 1951 Refugee Convention, because the person needs to show that they are individually at risk of persecution on one of the listed grounds — let's say, race, religion, nationality, social group, or political opinion.

Basically, the person needs to make the case and prove that they are targeted individually, which means that a person fleeing general violence, like a war, does not necessarily qualify.

So, when it comes to Temporary Protection, one of the main differences is that it's a status granted on a group basis. So, Ukrainians are not examined on an individual basis. All those who have, let's say, Ukrainian nationality and left Ukraine after the full-scale invasion started receive temporary protection. It's kind of guaranteed on a group basis.

When we just pay attention to the racialized and culturalized and ethnicized terms, we forget to pay attention to pre-existing structural conditions. And in the case of Ukrainian displacement, among those was, first of all, geographical proximity to the EU, which in many ways simplified their access to the EU borders.

And one of those conditions was also the visa-free regime that was introduced between the EU and Ukraine in 2017, which allowed people to enter the EU without a visa for 90 days.

Also, a general condition that facilitated the introduction of temporary protection is the fact that over the last decades, different regimes of temporary protections have been proliferated across different geographical regions. And this is something that very often people forget to mention — by people I mean in the media, but quite often in academia— that, oh, the Temporary Protection Directive was for the first time introduced in the case of the Ukrainian displaced, which is correct.

But the Temporary Protection Directive was devised in the wake of the Yugoslav wars. And it wasn't devised specifically for Ukrainians. It was activated for the first time for them. But also, importantly, temporary protection regimes… they are not uncommon.

So, for example, Syrians in Turkey were also placed under Temporary Protection. Or, for example, local temporary protection regimes in Latin America for people from Venezuela.

Asia Tsisar: I just wanted to point out that this is a question of citizenship and having Ukrainian passports, because also two years before the full-scale invasion, the mass protests happened in Belarus, and a lot of activists and people who went through the persecution system in Belarus moved to Ukraine. They were holders of Belarus passports, but they lived in Ukraine when the full-scale invasion started.

They also fled the war, in fact, but they were not granted the same status as Ukrainians.

Ruslana Koziienko: No, no.

Asia Tsisar: So, they were applying for this refugee status.

Ruslana Koziienko: Yes, yes, absolutely. I mean, those people found themselves in a very difficult position. In our research on the reception of Ukrainian displaced in Vienna, we interviewed, I think, two people who were in such a situation, and they basically experienced displacement twice within a couple of years.

And one of those was a mother and a child, and those people were eventually deported from Austria to Poland, because in Poland, the woman had, if I'm not mistaken, Humanitarian Protection, which was the third time she experienced displacement. So, there were formal requirements. So, no, in that sense, other nationals are not eligible for Temporary Protection.

Asia Tsisar: Let's come back to the Temporary Protection Directive. What does it guarantee to the holder, and what benefits it gives?

Ruslana Koziienko: So, Temporary Protection was granted at the EU level, but nation-states basically had quite a lot of freedom in how they implement it. So, they have to give basic rights: allow people to reside, give them the right to work, access to education, and the right to healthcare support.

But then, when you compare the conditions in which Ukrainian displaced people found themselves in different countries, they are different. And people often mention Germany, but I think it's important to keep in mind that Germany is quite an exception within EU countries. Because, for example, Germany offers enough financial support to live upon; you would have accommodation. But we sometimes forget that many other EU countries do not offer that, and they either offer very low financial support — like under a hundred of euros — or there are also countries that are in the middle. They kind of offer you something, but it is not enough to live upon.

So, going back to Austria, which case I know the best. Unfortunately, in Austria, social accommodation is very limited, and mostly displaced people from Ukraine lived in private accommodation. Paying for this accommodation. Very often they paid just something they could afford, and they were received and supported by locals who were willing to help them. Sometimes they didn't pay anything because they were received again by people who wanted to help.

But again, when you decide to help and, let's say, receive a family of displaced people in your apartment, you don't know how long this is going to last. So, you think, OK, maybe a couple of weeks, and then the state will do something. But this was not happening, and people stayed for months or they could have stayed for years. But this is not something locals would expect when they offered this kind of support, which is very problematic because it kind of shifted a lot of responsibility for the reception of displaced people onto civil society, like NGOs and locals who were willing to help.

So, the point I was trying to make is that Germany and countries maybe like France and Finland — those countries are rather an exception where Ukrainian displaced people are offered enough support to live upon. But in many other countries, you cannot actually stay in the country unless you have other sources of income — let's say you have savings.

Very often, Ukrainians are pushed into a gray zone, and they are working illegally. Or, because the majority of displaced from Ukraine are women and children and elderly, in some cases those women live with the support of their husbands who stayed in Ukraine.

So, in that sense, Ukrainians are somehow placed between being a displaced person and being expected to be basically an economic migrant. Because if you're not given enough support, you have no other choice than to find other ways to support yourself. Which is, again, very contrasting with the benevolent reception of Ukrainian displaced people and all those who praise temporary protection as a way to receive displaced people.

And in many cases, it was even argued that, oh, it's such a beneficial status that it should be extended to other displaced people. Which is, again, very problematic because this is a very uncertain status in the long term. Because while in the short term, okay, you are given all these rights and you are not kept in a refugee camp for years,

in the long term, there are many uncertainties and vulnerabilities related to the status because the moment the EU countries decide that it is safe to return to Ukraine, they can basically take the status back. And also, it's still not clear whether the time spent under temporary protection would eventually count toward citizenship, which again gives people no certainty. And again, in contrast with refugee status, which, as we discussed, gives people certainty in the long term because they can actually start building their lives in a foreign country and not be afraid that their status would be taken back any day.

Asia Tsisar: Somehow, this is my observation too, that during the three years of the Russian invasion, in the eyes of society — but also, I believe, from the perspective of Ukrainians themselves — displaced people from Ukraine were moved from being seen as people who flee the war to being viewed as labor migrants who are in the EU to live this very humble life of a migrant worker.

And most of the people ended up in very precarious jobs like housekeeping, taking care of elderly people, and cleaning services.

Of course, it's a question of language, but it's also a question of the possibilities that you have in this labor market as a migrant slash refugee, because I can't separate these concepts in this situation.

Ruslana Koziienko: Okay, let's start with the concept. So, I think it's important to clarify in the case of displaced people from Ukraine, that it's incorrect to call them refugees. As a matter of fact, because their legal status is not refugee, it's a displaced person. But also, refugee is a notion that is very often applied to displaced people regardless of their status, but also it's a very loaded notion and a very stigmatized one, and it's a notion of governance.

So, in that sense, I believe there is value in applying the notion of displaced people or people with experience of displacement to any people who experience displacement, regardless of their status.

Because I believe that what this notion does, it actually underscores the common dynamics of displacement, the commonalities of their experiences. And it has certain political potential in it because it draws attention to those commonalities rather than to the legal fictions that compartmentalize people.

About labor migration. Such a thing as de-skilling is something that happens to all displaced people — Ukrainians, non-Ukrainians, it doesn't matter. De-skilling means that you cannot find a job according to your qualifications. You are de-skilled into any kind of low-paid, unskilled jobs. And again, Ukrainians are not an exception in that.

I mean, if we are talking about Ukrainians, there are many obstacles common to all EU countries, such as language or recognition of diplomas, because it takes a lot of time to go through the nostrification process and recognize their Ukrainian diplomas abroad.

But there are also obstacles specific to certain countries. Again, if we talk about Austria — I don't know to what extent I should go into details — but the way the system is built for Ukrainian displaced people for a long time, and still, prevents them from accessing jobs. So, as I mentioned, temporary protection status is very uncertain in the sense that it can be discontinued at any point. And employers might actually be unwilling to invest in the onboarding process of Ukrainian displaced people because they are not sure if those people will have a status next year. So, like, why would they invest in employing a Ukrainian person if, let's say, in six months their temporary protection might be discontinued and they won't have a legal basis for remaining in the country?

So, in that sense, again, temporary protection — even though it is known for giving all those rights, including the right to work — the temporariness of this protection prevents people from finding a job because their status is a very short-term status.

When it comes to Austria, so, there's a peculiarity, which is also not that uncommon, because something similar happened in some other EU countries. In Austria, it was decided to place Ukrainians in what's called Grundversorgung, which is “basic care” — a system that was created for asylum seekers. But for asylum seekers, this was a temporary system in which they stayed until they received a decision on their asylum application.

For Ukrainians, even though they are not waiting for any kind of decision, they were still placed under the system, and a person loses their social support the moment they start earning 110 euros. Which means that because it's almost impossible to find a full-time job right away, people are basically prevented from entering the legal labor market. Because, let's say, they found a part-time job — the moment they start earning, they immediately lose social support, which makes no sense because they cannot live on what they started to earn.

So, for a year, this was the situation for Ukrainians. This was one of the main obstacles toward employment.

This was changed, as far as I remember, in spring 2023. Austria introduced a gradual system where the more you earn, the less social support you receive. But again, in practice, still it was not gradual enough in the sense that people were still losing social support when they were still not self-reliant.

So, this is just kind of an insight into the Austrian system, which shows how the peculiarities of Temporary Protection within national frameworks can prevent people from accessing certain rights and basically push people, let's say, into gray employment. Because the moment they are officially employed, they lose any kind of social support, and they cannot sustain themselves. So, that's one part of the issue.

But in general, even when you look at the discourse, but also practices, there is this expectation of Ukrainians that they should start working right away. So, the moment you fled the war, you're expected to find employment exactly because it is emphasized that you are given all the rights. So, there is this expectation, and it's part of the system because the system is geared towards people's employment eventually. Which is very problematic because, I mean, those are people who are seeking safety and dealing with a lot of trauma.

And many of them actually are not able to enter the labor market because they have dependents — let's say, elderly parents or women who left Ukraine with their parents or their children. So, they are not able to enter the labor market, or the elderly themselves, or people with disabilities. So, this is the kind of dangerous road where people who actually need care and support and safety are treated as labor migrants instead.

But also, I think Ukrainians themselves, in many ways, contribute to the reproduction of this kind of expectation. When we interviewed Ukrainians in Vienna, they emphasized their willingness to work but inability to find a proper job.

I mean, it's probably connected to our work ethics in Ukraine, and dependence on social support is unfortunately stigmatized by Ukrainians themselves for no really good reason. Because whenever you enter a Facebook group of Ukrainians, and ask questions about social support, instead, they tell them to go find a job.

And also, there is a sense of expectation that Ukrainians should be grateful for what they received and not take advantage. I mean, this trope of gratefulness and expectation of gratefulness is not something specific to Ukrainians. It's very common to any kind of displaced people who were received in the EU — this kind of expectation that they should be grateful for what they received. And the reality of what they received and how they received it is actually ignored.

So, like all these things coming together, the way the whole system functions is that Ukrainians are basically between refugees and labor migrants. They're in this really weird position where, for some reason, if you fled your own country, you are expected to find work right away.

Asia Tsisar: What are the results of your research in Vienna [8]? And what were your personal insights from these interviews?

Ruslana Koziienko: So, I think there are results at different levels. I already kind of touched upon this, like on the conditions of Ukrainian displaced people in Austria, but also probably more and more importantly was to see this contrast between what are the seeming relative advantages of temporary protection and how the reality looks, but also, most importantly, what it does to the international protection system in general and how these narratives about benevolent reception obscure the common dynamics and the pre-existing structural conditions common for displaced people in general.

This wasn't something we focused on, but perhaps as a side note, what was hard for me to hear and to observe was how Ukrainians themselves quite often reproduce the stigmatizing and racialized narratives about other displaced people.

So, for example, in the media, Ukrainians are very often called refugees. This is another misconception that exists. Ukrainians are not refugees because they do not have refugee status, but still, very often in the media and in political discourse, they are called refugees.

And this is something Ukrainians very often resist when they're asked about how they perceive themselves in the country. And they resist being called a refugee, obviously, because the notion of a refugee has become highly stigmatized and is very often associated with lack of agency and dependence on social assistance.

I mean, in a very human way, I understand why a person would not want to be associated with something like that, but again, this contributes to the reproduction of these racialized and stigmatizing narratives about refugees in general.

So, when you ask Ukrainians, they would rather call themselves, I don't know, like guests, or they would stress the temporariness of their presence in the country, or they might accept the notion of refugee, but they would still kind of try to underscore some differences between them and quote-unquote other refugees.

I mean, I can only guess, but I think what is probably at play is the fact that Ukraine — as a country, I mean — it has never received big numbers of refugees. So, naturally, people mostly learn about them from the media, and the media very often reproduce these stigmatizing narratives and portrayals of how a displaced person looks.

So, yeah, Ukrainians would try to dissociate themselves somehow from other displaced people. In the interviews, Ukrainians would quite often underscore that they are law-abiding people, like Europeans, underscore the fact that Ukraine is willing to join the EU and commonalities between them and Europeans, and at the same time underscore the differences between them and other displaced people.

Which I think… I mean, it's a very sad story because on the one hand, this kind of perpetuation of these specialized stereotypes contributes to the erosion of public support for displaced people in general, but it also prevents seeing the common dynamics of experience rather than underscoring their differences.

Asia Tsisar: I believe there are a lot of things we can learn from each other, and there are a lot of ways we can support each other, but the paradox is that in the world where it seems that we are so connected, it's actually not that easy for people from marginalized communities to hear each other's perspectives. And it's not so visible that the way in which we direct our attention and voices often recreates this colonial link, where those who need to hear us are usually imagined as stereotypical first-class white people.

But also for Ukrainians — and this is one of those perspectives that might not be so clear or visible from the outside — for Ukrainians, just as for Georgians, people in Moldova, and our other neighbors who inhabit this buffer zone called Eastern Europe, becoming a part of the European Union is the only way, the only provided way, to secure ourselves from becoming a part of Russia.

And basically, during these 11 years of war, ever since Russia attacked Ukraine in 2014, Europe has been constructed in the media and in the public discourse as a sort of dream that comes hand in hand with your chances to survive.

At the same time, whether or not Ukraine belongs to Europe was — and I think in many places still is — an open question for citizens of the European Union. So, being put in this position of having to prove or deserve something, I think the intention of Ukrainian displaced people is understandable, but it's also very, very sad, I believe.

Ruslana Koziienko: I mean, it's a very different topic, but I think it's a very interesting one — what imaginaries of the West or Europe more specifically are. There is a very interesting article by Ivan Shmatko [9] about this imaginary Europe and what it means.

I mean, when you talk to people in Ukraine or from Ukraine, what they mean by Europe involves a lot of imaginaries about what it means to be in Europe. And very often, people invest those imaginaries with things that might not be there at all. But usually, yes, Europe is constructed as this object of desire.

And in that sense, as I said, I think it's easy to understand, but also very sad and painful to observe these processes. I mean, in the text I wrote [10],

I call it false solidarity, because I think it's a form of false solidarity. Because Ukrainians, by reproducing these widespread racialized imaginaries of displaced people from other regions, and trying to kind of show their categorical proximity or closeness to EU citizens, is understandable, but also it prevents them from solidarizing with other displaced people and, ideally achiving… contributing — at least contributing — to building some kind of different society, a more inclusive one and a more equal one.

Asia Tsisar: I believe also in your essay [11] you make this argument that such a wave of people fleeing Ukraine and the war could have been the pretext for a systematic revision of EU refugee policies. But because Ukrainians were treated as a one-time exception, it actually never led to any kind of systematic changes.

Because I think that this is a very, very interesting idea, because also it puts a lot of responsibility on the EU as a structure, trying to protect itself in a certain way by artificially building this gulf between people?

Ruslana Koziienko: Yeah, so, very simply, what the introduction of Temporary Protection did was that since it allowed people to enter on a mass basis and not on an individual basis. It allowed the EU countries to avoid this cumbersome procedure of examining each case individually, and it allowed them to avoid the overwhelming management of the border regime, which I believe also contributed to preserving the current status quo. And the current status quo is the border regime of this fortress of Europe — which keeps strengthening its borders to keep the others outside of those borders.

While, yeah, it allowed EU countries to avoid any kind of structural change. And instead, it also created, as I say, another legal fiction. So we have legal fictions such as refugee status or subsidiary protection or stateless person; it created just one more legal fiction called temporary protection. So, people, regardless of their experiences, are compartmentalized into this legal definition, which creates legal and structural boundaries between them because then they follow different tracks and they end up in different conditions.

Again, I'm not saying some of them are better or worse. They are very different because, as I said, temporary protection is not a beneficial status - it's a discriminatory status, especially when it comes to long-term protection. And these legal and structural differences prevent people from seeing that there are actually a lot of common dynamics in their experiences and a lot of commonalities.

Of course, I'm not saying that they are exactly in the same position. Differences are also important, but I believe there is a way to preserve those differences and respect those differences, but also there is a space for common action and understanding and empathy and solidarity between people and acting together.

So, the way the system is built — and media narratives unfortunately contribute to this — is that the system kind of pits different displaced people against each other because they see the differences rather than the commonalities.

And again, going back to this kind of facade of false generosity of Temporary Protection, I think what it creates is a kind of rather humanitarian generosity. I mean, here I rely on Paulo Freire [12], who was a Brazilian educator and philosopher, and he suggests the idea of false generosity, and he draws the distinction between true humanist generosity and humanitarian generosity.

Humanitarian generosity is a kind of support or aid which is just enough to survive, but it's not enough to create a change and create the conditions for empowerment of displaced people. So, it reproduces dependence of displaced people on this humanitarian system rather than giving them enough to live their dignified lives.

Another thing I wanted to mention, and I think it's very much related to what you said, is that this reproduction of the narrative of exceptionality of Ukrainian displaced people, the exceptionality of temporary protection, is also very much related to the willingness to present the current situation as a crisis.

I mean, the notion of crisis is very important because, as we saw in 2015, 2016, the mass influx of displaced people is very often presented as a crisis. Even though we are living in a world where displacement of people is very common and it's never-ending.

And it's not that hard for nation-states to predict and be prepared for possible entrance of displaced people, because one way or another, we have a lot of wars going on. So, there are always people fleeing those dangers.

But it's a certain political choice to frame this kind of movement of people — which is not in any way exceptional historically; people are always on the move, there are always those who migrate or flee wars or dangers — to present them as a crisis.

Because what the notion of crisis does is that it justifies short-term solutions, short-term aid; it justifies unpreparedness and these kinds of short-term fixes and emergency solutions instead of preserving long-term structures in place for the possible entrance and protection of displaced people.

And it's very, I think, important to think about what we choose — I mean, not we, but what maybe nation-states or authorities choose — to call a crisis. I really like this quote by Laura Robson [13] in her recent book Human Capital [14], where she discusses the movement of people in 2015 and the fact that Turkey was and still is the country that has the biggest number of displaced people in the world.

She writes that “From a European and international perspective, it was not the migrants' exit from Syria but their entrance into Europe that had transformed a tragedy into a crisis”.

So, what she means is that it is a decision to call something a crisis. And you might see that it was not the movement of people from Syria to Turkey or elsewhere that was called a crisis — it was called a crisis the moment they wanted to enter the EU.

So, again, this notion of crisis contributes to the justification of general unpreparedness and lack of long-term solutions, which is again, from the political point of view, understandable because the migration "issue" is always something on the agenda of political parties when they run for elections. But it's, I think, a very important thing to keep in mind.

Asia Tsisar: Coming back to the idea of solidarity, what are your observations? How we can make this practice more sustainable?

Ruslana Koziienko: I am not a researcher of solidarity. I mean, the text I wrote was kind of an opinion piece. And the kind of solidarity I argued for there was very much related to education initiatives.

So, like, when the full-scale invasion started, there were many education initiatives created or offered for Ukrainian displaced people, especially students who lost their ability to continue their education in school or university in Ukraine.

And again, I'm not a researcher… Like, I didn't do research on this. I can only judge from what I know from being part of this system because I'm a doctoral student. So, one way or another, I encounter these kinds of initiatives.

And many of those initiatives were, again, short-term and not sustainable in the long term — probably mostly for reasons of funding, because we have this kind of international system of support that whenever there is a crisis, then the funding is drawn in that direction. And then the focus shifts to another kind of crisis, and the money goes there. So, there is no sustainability.

Asia Tsisa: Exactly!

Ruslana Koziienko: Unfortunately, it all comes back to the need for durable, sustainable solutions that should be in place for people who need these solutions. So, like, many organizations or institutions offered whatever they could from — I don't know — from different positions, to the possibility to enroll in the university. Again, I don't want to overgeneralize it because there are so many different examples,

but many of them were not sustainable, and they were there for, let's say, a year, maybe two, and then they disappeared. Which, honestly, for me was — and still is — very sad to observe, because those opportunities should have been in place in the first place, not only for Ukrainians but for other people coming from the East or the South. So, it's very unfortunate that the war gave impetus to those opportunities because they should have been in place a long time ago.

And what many of those initiatives did, they kind of again compartmentalized Ukrainians into this pocket of education initiatives for Ukrainians, where Ukrainians would find themselves in a homogeneous classroom, where they would be studying with other displaced people from Ukraine.

And I think it is very important — again, going back to the idea of building and developing solidarities — if you have a classroom of displaced people, those should be displaced people coming from different regions, because students do not only learn from their teachers, they also learn from each other and from each other's experiences, and this is how they get to know each other.

So, yeah, that was the piece where I was arguing for these kinds of initiatives, where the funding that comes for education initiatives should not come for, let's say, only Syrians or only Ukrainians or only that kind of nationals or citizens, but it should create conditions for heterogeneous exchange and heterogeneous kinds of education initiatives.