Social Europe Incentives in reverse: returning Ukrainian refugees Taras Romashchenko 17th September 2024 Controversial proposals addressed to Ukrainian refugees may perversely only keep them in exile.

Social Europe

Incentives in reverse: returning Ukrainian refugees

Taras Romashchenko 17th September 2024

Controversial proposals addressed to Ukrainian refugees may perversely only keep them in exile.

Bedraggled group woth two babies, a child and a pet, carrying what personal goods they can.

The exodus: refugees crossing the border with Romania in March 2022 (mady70/shutterstock.com)

Ukraine, which for more than two and a half years has had to fight for its survival in an unequal struggle against Russian occupation, faces not only security but also existential demographic challenges, due to the loss of millions of its citizens as a result of forced migration. The president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has repeatedly advocated the repatriation of Ukrainians abroad; this is expected to play a pivotal role in restoring the economy and reinforcing the country’s military capabilities.

Various incentives, on the part of the host countries and Ukraine itself, could encourage Ukrainians to return home voluntarily and en masse. Their effectiveness could however be diminished by a controversial information campaign emerging in Ukrainian and foreign media.

Punitive initiatives

Statements by some Ukrainian officials have caused concern. For instance, after the war ends a three-year travel ban on Ukrainian men, which would be likely to deter many from returning, might be imposed. Equally damaging have been recurrent assertions that Ukraine intends to penalise upon return those who illegally left the country during the military mobilisation. Such threats from the state will deter not only individual men but also their families and relatives—millions of Ukrainians in all.

Indeed an impressive list of punitive initiatives are being discussed around the legislature and in society at large. Some proposals amid martial law—such as refusal to provide consular and other services to men abroad or blocking their bank accounts—seem at the least debatable. Others are arguably counterproductive to the success of voluntary-repatriation programmes. This is particularly the case with restrictions on or deprivations of the civil rights of men who did not return to Ukraine for their mobilisation in time.

Some ideas being floated—such as banning children of men who evade mobilisation from entering Ukrainian higher-education institutions—border on the absurd. The younger generation hardly want to be held hostage for the actions of their parents and the number of those planning to become students in Ukraine has decreased by a third in just one year, from 282,000 in 2023 to 189,000 in 2024. Young Ukrainians are reorienting themselves to pursue studies at universities elsewhere.

No less shocking is the call to ban all Ukrainian kids from fleeing abroad from the war. They are supposed to remain under the Russian bombardment and constantly face death and suffering in Ukraine, to be ready one day to become warriors.

Catastrophic implications

Maybe emotional media statements by some civil-society representatives may still be regarded as acceptable. But when representatives of the Ukrainian authorities canvass for financial sanctions against millions of their citizens, this is unacceptable.

It is worth recalling the calls by top officials for host countries to stop any support for Ukrainian forced migrants. Rather than resulting in significant repatriation, this would merely exacerbate the socio-economic challenges faced by exiles in their host countries, leading many to sever ties with their homeland permanently. Indeed, there have already been hundreds of thousands of applications to renounce Ukrainian citizenship.

In the context of the war, it is of course extremely difficult for the Ukrainian state to maintain a balance among military needs, the demands of the economy and the democratic development of society. But the most effective means of encouraging voluntary repatriation of Ukrainian refugees is diverse and flexible incentives (mainly economic ones), not coercion and threats.

Otherwise, one should not only expect Ukrainian forced migrants to stay put but indeed that more citizens will leave Ukraine. According to the National Bank of Ukraine, the country will lose another 700,000 through emigration by the end of 2025. With Ukraine topping the most recent list of the world’s countries with the highest mortality and lowest birth rate, this would have catastrophic implications demographically and for the labour force.

The state must make a strategic decision on a simple question: does it need millions of its displaced citizens? Assuming it does, everything must be done to ensure Ukrainian refugees return home en masse without coercion.

Fortunately, this position is shared by the president, who recently expressed his support for the purely voluntary return of forced migrants to Ukraine.

Taras Romashchenko 1

Taras Romashchenko

Taras Romashchenko is a visiting professor and senior lecturer at Bielefeld University and has been a postdoctoral research fellow at Danube University Krems. He is also an associate professor of international economics at Bohdan Khmelnytsky National University of Cherkasy, Ukraine.