Ukrainian exiles in France: livelihood strategies cooked up from scratch
“This research aims to shed light on the survival strategies invented and deployed by Ukrainian exiles welcomed in France since February 24, 2022.”
What formal and informal devices are mobilized in the subsistence strategies of Ukrainian exiles? How dependent are they on the mechanisms offered to them by the French state and by associations?
This research focuses on the social and economic survival strategies of Ukrainian exiles: the use they make of social benefits, their other sources of income, their housing and health conditions, their children’s schooling, their degree of integration into local social and economic structures, their interactions with other Ukrainians and people of post-Soviet origin, their movements in France and elsewhere, the temporalities of their stay in France and eventual return to Ukraine.
The fieldwork consists of an ethnographic survey of Ukrainian exiles welcomed in France since the start of the Russian invasion in 2022. It includes in-depth interviews, as well as ethnographic observations, in three main geographical areas: Paris and the Paris region; Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur; and more remote, less densely populated locations where exiles from Ukraine reside.
The fieldwork consists of an ethnographic survey of Ukrainian exiles welcomed in France since the start of the Russian invasion in 2022. It includes in-depth interviews, as well as ethnographic observations, in three main geographical areas: Paris and the Paris region; Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur; and more remote, less densely populated locations where exiles from Ukraine reside.
This research is part of the field of socio-anthropological studies on informality. It provides a clearer picture of the dynamic interactions between formal norms and devices, and the real-life use made of them by the publics concerned; the way in which these norms and devices are used, diverted, avoided and/or supplemented by other tools from the realm of informality.
This research is conducted in collaboration with two other researchers, both Ukrainian sociologists, Anastasia Riabchuk and Yevheniia Polshchykova.
Biographies
Denys Gorbach obtained a doctorate in political science from Sciences Po Paris in 2022. Prior to his academic career, which took him to Budapest and then Paris, he worked as an economic journalist in Ukraine. He is currently a research professor at Sciences Po Paris. His research focuses on the ways in which the political culture of the working classes is interwoven into the political-economic landscape.
Anastasia Riabchuk obtained her doctorate in sociology from Kyiv’s Mohyla National University, under joint supervision with EHESS. Her research focuses on precariousness and marginality in Ukrainian society. Her latest project sheds light on the issues facing village communities in the Donbas region in the context of the war. Anastasia teaches at INALCO and is a researcher at Oxford University.
Yevheniia Polshchykova is a Ukrainian sociologist. She has conducted qualitative surveys in collaboration with the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS), GfK and other research institutions. These surveys, carried out for UNESCO, WHO, the World Bank, FAO and other organizations, focus on the marginalized strata of Ukrainian society, and on various socio-economic and political issues. She currently lives in France.