On war in Ukraine, double standards and the epistemological ignoring of the global east

A Long-Term View of Refugee Flows from Ukraine: War, Insecurities, and Migration

“…In 2013, Ukraine was not even in the top 30 countries of origin for asylum seekers; however applications rose to 34,380 after the conflict started, making Ukraine third among the European countries of origin for asylum seekers in the EU (Solodko and Fitisova, 2016). Asylum applications were made on the basis of the ongoing war in the East, discrimination against displaced persons, absence of governmental assistance to IDPs, and the need to evade military service, as is the case in many other countries (Lapshyan and Düvell, 2015).…”

“…The middle classes, students and professionals in Ukraine considered EU accession an important avenue for attaining higher socio-economic mobility. Already before the war, general dissatisfaction with life in Ukraine was high and according to a survey conducted between 2011-2013, 49% of Ukrainians harboured aspirations to migrate (Lapshyan and Düvell, 2015). All these insecurities served to increase mobility from Ukraine.…”

A power-knowledge approach

“…The division between Global West and Global East (Düvell & Lapshyna, 2022;Müller, 2020) marks a further fault line in the unequal geography of knowledge production in deportation studies (Klaus, 2023). Deportation to post-Soviet states and Balkan countries has long been a neglected area of research; this is despite these regions receiving large numbers of deportees.…”

Visual humanization of refugees: A visual rhetorical analysis of media discourse on the war in Ukraine

“…Several European countries that showed reluctance to immigration during the refugee “crisis” of 2015 have now opened their borders to Ukrainians. While certain scholars contend that this contrasting treatment of Ukrainian refugees versus those from the Global South stems from geopolitical and citizenship frameworks dictating freedom of movement within Europe (Bejan & Bogovic, 2022; Düvell & Lapshyna, 2022), other academics and human rights organizations assert that this represents a double standard, alleging that racial considerations underlie the discrepancy in treatment (Ellison & Andrews, 2022; Euro‐Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, 2022; Paré, 2022).…”

“…Several European countries that showed reluctance to immigration during the refugee "crisis" of 2015 have now opened their borders to Ukrainians. While certain scholars contend that this contrasting treatment of Ukrainian refugees versus those from the Global South stems from geopolitical and citizenship frameworks dictating freedom of movement within Europe (Bejan & Bogovic, 2022;Düvell & Lapshyna, 2022),…”