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Paper short abstract

Ukrainian mobility to Poland’s capital intensified and progressed from existential to forced due to the escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian war. This increase in mobility came concurrently with a class-conflict transportation and a collective (re-)assessment of worth vis-à-vis the Polish society.

Paper long abstract

The world of the 21st century has been initially theorised as boundless, whereby roots have become routes (Friedman, 2002). Whilst this idea of boundlessness has been countlessly criticised as a hyperbole (Ingold, 2009; Kirby 2010), the question of bounds remains. A decade ago, a Ukrainian engaging in cross-border mobility to Poland’s capital seemingly possessed the capability to decide where to live, thereby turning an aspiration into reality. Yet, this migration of hope was a blend of existential mobility at the backdrop, and (im)mobile momentums of fear-inducing Polish bureaucracy and a sense of responsibility to provide for those left behind at the forefront. In this decade, when Russo-Ukrainian war is a lived experience, the mobility of a Ukrainian national is often reduced to the label of ‘forced’. Forced mobility tends to be equated to dispossession and displacement, which albeit present, do not holistically define the journeys of all Ukrainians seeking refuge in Warsaw. One of my long-term settled Ukrainian migrant interlocutors in the summer of 2022 described the early influx of Ukrainian refugees as “Mazhory have arrived”. The term mazhory- privileged children of upper/middle-class in Ukraine- inferred privilege amongst the vulnerability of war that they fled. Indeed, the privileged were a fraction amongst those who entered Warsaw traumatised and dispossessed. It is clear, however, that the Varsovian Ukrainian community has expanded owing to an increased war-driven mobility, but with this enlargement came a class-conflict transportation and a new inner Ukrainian hierarchy of deservingness based on sympathy, trauma, and fear.