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[Auto-generated transcript. Edits may have been applied for clarity.]
Hello and welcome to the Migration Oxford Podcast.

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I'm Rob McNeil and I'm Jackie Brodhead. Today we've been speaking about women and displacement, uh, from the Ukrainian war.

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Now, Jackie, why specifically have we been speaking about women in this context?

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Thanks, Rob. I think we wanted to talk about this because the Ukrainian war is such an example of displacement

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of women and children because of the rules in place by the Ukrainian government for fighting men.

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That means that both the internal displacement within Ukraine and the external displacement.

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A lot of that has been women. And so this research has been about exploring what does it mean?

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How is it different? What is the same about a displacement crisis that is predominantly affecting women and children?

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I mean, we've heard we heard a lot about the specific experiences of women in this situation,

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about about how things feel from a female perspective and from my point of view as a man,

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they were illuminating because they did shine a light on a different way of looking at things to the way that I tend to.

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And um, yeah, one other thing that we that we have seen is that there's been a big change in perspectives on whether or not people are

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intending to stay long term in countries like the UK and I presume in other European countries after this long period of time.

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Now, Jackie, um, what what did you what did you take from that?

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I think, you know, it's a very difficult topic during an ongoing conflict to ask people about what their intentions are.

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Um, particularly because of, you know, very complex ideas of what it means to return home.

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Something we hear about in the conversation. But in the UK we have seen a shift.

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And that does have really profound consequences.

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Um, for a programme that was thought to be temporary or was hoped to be temporary, that we're now seeing as people have laid down roots in the UK.

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Um, especially with children who've now spent a considerable proportion of their lives here.

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More and more people are saying that their longer term intention is to stay in the UK.

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Um, and that feels important in the conversation about what will happen post conflict in Ukraine,

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but also for those receiving countries and how they, um, how they focus on what they're going to do around integration and longer term inclusion.

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Indeed. And we see we see this in a migration observatory briefing, which I'm just going to plug shamelessly before we go into this.

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But on that note, I think let's let's listen to these very powerful testimonies.

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I'm speaking to Darina Devenish Chen Co visiting research fellow at the Department

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of Politics and International Relations here at the University of Oxford,

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and Tanya Oliver, co-founder of the To Be Well project, an app to support the wellbeing of displaced and other people.

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Darina, I want to start with you.

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Can you tell me what role gender has played in Ukraine's displacement crisis and how your research sought to explore this?

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Thank you jacki. Well, gender is widely recognised as one of the factors, which of course,

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affects individual experiences and displacement in Ukraine caused by Russias full scale invasion has proved it vividly.

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Just to illustrate the scale of the displacement crisis.

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Right now, there are over 6 million Ukrainian refugees in Europe.

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And in some countries, um, almost 90% of them are women.

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Of all internally displaced people in Ukraine, 60% are again, women and women make up also 86% of all IDPs seeking actively employment.

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So displacement generally exacerbates inequalities in all aspects women, young girls and other marginalised categories,

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as for instance disabled people or the elderly are often at higher risks of human rights violations.

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Also, the displaced individuals are often correlated with the experience of gender based violence.

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With this in mind, get with my colleague Doctor Mani.

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Hold. We started the research project, which is particularly focusing on exploring the experience of displaced Ukrainians,

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those who got displaced internally. Our study is based on quantitative survey among 1000 respondents and 70 in-depth interviews,

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which I conducted with internally displaced women from different regions in Ukraine.

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Our primary goal was to amplify the voices of those who are absent from the discourse around the war,

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and these are particularly women who got displaced and who faced lots of challenges related to their displacement.

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Thanks so much for doing it, Tanya. Hearing from during there about how many women are kind of impacted.

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Could you talk to us about some of the kind of common strategies that women have been using to cope with that displacement,

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and the things that they've been doing and what you found? Yeah.

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Thank you, Jeff, and thank you, Dr. Arena. Um, it's, uh, an interesting question.

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You know, when I just came to the UK, I was trying to to do my best, uh, for myself, for my son, for my mother.

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And I was seeking to communicate with, uh, other Ukrainians.

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I wanted to, to know that they are here, that I can share with them.

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What? What's happening to me? My pain. You know, what I'm going through.

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And, um, I think that one of the most important issue that I want to emphasise is, uh, ability to create a sense of community,

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um, even in the most challenging circumstances, women want to, uh, to be together in a circle,

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whatever, uh, uh, to be able to comfort each other, you know, with words or I know many, uh, women, uh,

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giving, sharing information about jobs, about how even start a business together, uh, about childcare.

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I know so many cases when and me as well, because I'm a mother of ten years old and I'm having this issue,

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and I need to some time for myself, self time or time to for to do my work.

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I am not able to leave my, uh, child alone and I'm asking my friends to do that.

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We are helping each other. So one of the most, uh, important, I would say, I would, uh, say that this is this ability to create, uh, community.

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And by the way, this is why, uh, this is a very important part of mobile application I'm working now on.

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Uh, we have the, uh, huge part for community support, uh, like, uh,

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trained listeners where Ukrainian people can support each other just by giving this, uh, this ability to top to speak about their issues,

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you know, because when I came to the UK, uh, another problem that I saw that I faced was that there were no,

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um, mental wellbeing support in my own language.

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Right? I mean, there were initiatives, but, uh, the best what people could do, uh, those who didn't speak English could,

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for example, um, have some art therapy to create some drawings or, uh, sing together.

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Right. But it's not the same. It's not. It's great that we have it, but it's not the same.

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We want to communicate, uh, same language.

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We want to express ourselves in the language where we feel comfortable.

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Another thing, as I, as I mentioned, you know, is children,

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because most of the displaced people are women as they're in the set and they have children one, two, three, sometimes four.

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And, um, one of the important thing, uh, for them, I, I've organised, uh, the other day from,

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from the very beginning, this, uh, circle with, uh, um, uh, mined in, um, High Wycombe.

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And we were asking what is the most important priority for you right away?

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And they were saying, it's, um, our children well-being.

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We want to give them this sense of normality.

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You know, even in this such a dramatic, not normal situation like, uh, being and experiencing the war.

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Because even though we are here safe in the UK, still we are, uh, touching it all the time.

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We are communicating with our relatives, with our friends.

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My son can play, uh, one of his, uh, computer game.

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Right? And then all of a sudden, he has to stop because, um, other side, his friend has to go to basement, um, because of, uh, you know, sirens.

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Mhm, mhm. You can hear, you know, when even when I'm talking now my voice is a little bit trembling because,

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uh, I feel like when, just when I'm talking about it, I feel this, um, pain of, uh,

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people being in different places and uh, like, we are not just people who are, for example,

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in the UK, we are not just, uh, getting through our challenges and then use, uh, environment.

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We also sort of feeling, um,

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a little bit guilty that we are not experiencing the same what our beloved one and like at least me and lots of my friends, I've been discussing it.

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They feel that this is really, um, unbearable, uh, to to to have it in your life.

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So yeah, trying to focusing on your child well-being, trying to make everything fine.

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To be the best mum, to organise the best environment, good school, you know, uh, for your child, having friends and so on.

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Thanks so much, Tanya. Dorina, Tanya's just spoken, I think really powerfully about some of the complexities of displacement.

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You know, the, um, the kind of disempowerment that you can feel and the lack of agency.

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But at the same time, lots of things that that you can do in terms of building community and,

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and the, you know, complex emotions around sometimes feeling guilty,

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sometimes feeling disorientated, but also in, particularly in the case of, of parents wanting to do the best for their, their children.

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I wonder if you could just tell us a little bit about how the women in, in your research have been kind of navigating that complexity.

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Community networks play a huge role for displaced women, and I've seen a lot,

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and I've talked to a lot of women who try to reinvent their sense of purpose and sense of belonging

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by joining groups or by creating a shared space where they can feel the same support from others,

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or they do it also from volunteering or helping others who shared the same experience.

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For instance, I talked to one lady who got displaced in 2014 from Crimea after its annexation by Russia to Zaporizhzhia region,

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and then as soon as Zaporizhzhia region, the place where she lived, was occupied in 2022, she got displaced the second time.

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And being a teacher in Crimea and then a private inntrepreneur in Zaporizhzhia region after her second displacement,

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she founded a non-for-profit organisation helping other displaced persons

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because she truly believed that she knows what these people are going through.

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She knows their needs and how to talk to them, and these experiences are not unique.

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In these stories, we can see that. Women's agency is generally at the heart of resilience in displacement.

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And women are not passive victims, and the experience shouldn't be understood solely through the trauma lens.

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There are leaders who are empowering others.

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In fact, our study proves that displacement can become catalysing for women's leadership,

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where they can actively shape their future and contribute to the recovery of their communities.

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Thanks so much to Rena. Tanya during this research has focussed on internally displaced people.

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Um, and obviously in the UK we have seen externally displaced people and yourself coming to the UK and being welcomed in the UK.

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I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about the different experience for externally displaced people.

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And Doreen, I'd love to hear kind of your reflections on the contrast between the between the two.

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Um, Tanya, over to you. When you are moving to, uh, different place, different country.

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Especially when you are not you. You didn't plan it. We didn't plan to go anywhere.

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Oh, most of us had a good life in Ukraine.

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Uh, I used to have my businesses, uh, good school for my some, uh, very set of life.

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And I hear these stories so many times.

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Uh, uh, and when I come here, for example, now I have, um,

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a master's degree in clinical psychology, but I couldn't work here as a clinical psychologist.

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Uh, I know people, doctors, you know, PhD scientists, right.

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Doing some researches, but they cannot do the same here.

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And especially if you don't know the language really well, then you only can try to work as in a shop, maybe, or as a cleaner.

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Uh, it's very difficult to, um, to do something that you are good at that you used to do in your country.

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It's very difficult, for example, to start a business because you don't know the rules, you don't know how the system works.

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And just, uh, uh, just trying to learn about it takes so much of your time and resources, every, every bit of it.

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You know how schools work. My son is, uh, uh, passing through his 11 plus, uh, which is completely different.

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We don't have anything like that in our country and so, so new that I'm now anxious and I'm now in stress.

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I don't know who is more stressed, my son or myself.

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And so, uh, this new information from one site.

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Yes. It's building, uh, new, uh, brain cells.

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Right. It's making us stronger from this point of view.

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At the same time, it's, uh, dragging our energy.

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It's much more difficult to focus on, uh, new things.

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So, uh, you don't always know what you don't know, right?

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You sometimes could not understand where to go or who to ask or what are your rights, uh, which year?

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For example, in Ukraine, you already got this knowledge by the age of even, I don't know, 20 or 25, you know how the system works.

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So that's how I call it. Uh, here, you have to start from the scratch.

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So your, uh, experience in most of the cases is not relevant.

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You have to get through from the very beginning with lots of things you have to fight about where and how to rent, uh, uh, flat where you will live.

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Right? It's so different from Ukraine.

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You know, in Ukraine, you can, uh, you can arrange renting a flat in, uh, in an hour if you really need it.

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And, uh, next day you will move. It's not the case here.

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Right? And, uh, so many things like that, uh, that, um, you even doing or have to do without realising it.

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And then another thing that, uh, you are solo mother here.

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You're all the time have to take care about your child.

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If you have children, you have to take care along.

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And this is such a, uh, burden, you know, uh, lots of, uh, um, women and, uh, um, communicating,

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uh, even breast a little bit about it because they don't have enough space for themselves.

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They need it so much. And again, because they are so focussed on their children and want to bring this normality thing,

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they are in this circle where, you know, it's difficult to give them normality when their mother is not happy.

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Thanks Tanya and Doreen, of this situation of people right internally displaced,

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I think Tanya spoke about some of the difficulties of navigating a system that you don't know.

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Well, presumably for those internally displaced, it's slightly different, but there were kind of other challenges.

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And I also wonder if your research has looked at the decision making processes

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that people went through about where they are moving to when they are displaced.

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And I know you've also done some work on the idea of people who are twice displaced, and I wonder if you could say a little bit about that.

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So the challenge yourself, very much similar. The same people have to find new accommodation.

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People have to change their sometimes they change their professions or find have to find a new job.

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But what is different? These. That the environment is more or less similar, so they don't have to learn a new language.

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They understand how the system works. Something that Tanya mentioned and they still can rely on the network network of friends relatives.

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They are not separated from people who they love. For instance, it would talk about women who got displaced.

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They are not separated from their husbands.

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On the other hand, I believe that the security station, considering the missile attacks in almost all cities of Ukraine which happen constantly,

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are making their experience more traumatic because these are simply attached to war every day.

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So considering that the majority of internally displaced people are from cities where Russian language is more common.

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So initially, while choosing their destination, their primary consideration was going as far as possible from the war.

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That means that they got displaced the western part of Ukraine, where Ukrainian is predominantly spoken by citizens.

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So it's not surprising that a lot of displaced people then change their destination and get displaced again,

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move again to the cities, which are linguistically or culturally more understandable to them.

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For instance, those which are located in central part of Ukraine or southern part of Ukraine, or the capital of Ukraine.

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Um, but that doesn't mean that these experiences can be considered as twice displacement, because that was their conscious choice.

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But Ukraine is one of those unique countries where people got forcibly displaced several times just within the last ten years.

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First time it happened in 2014, after the annexation of Crimea and occupation of parts of Donbas,

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and the second time after 24th of February 2022, when Russia invaded the whole territory of Ukraine.

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And the experience of those who got displaced for the second time is different from those who experienced it for the first time.

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We might assume that the prior experience might help you to get prepared, but unfortunately it doesn't work like that.

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And my interviews I conducted with a lot of respondents shows that 30 out of 70 interviewees were those who were displaced for the second time,

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and they mentioned many times that they could see a lot of differences in their experience of the first and second displacement.

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For instance, the second displacement happened much more rapidly, and they couldn't get prepared for it.

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It was much more stressful and much more traumatic.

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During the first displacement in 2014, people still had the chance in some cases to get back to their hometowns,

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collect things, see their relatives well after 2022.

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It's not the case as some towns got vanished just within several weeks.

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The second main difference in the experience of those who got displaced for the

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second time is that they stopped hoping for their return to their hometowns,

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something that they anticipated during the first displacement.

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They really thought that they would come back very soon, and it would last just for several weeks or months after the second displacement.

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They don't have any dreams like that any longer. And of course,

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we have to keep in mind that financial resources were already limited for people who got displaced for the first time before the 24th of February,

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2022. According to the prior research, the average income of IDPs in Ukraine before 2022 was twice lower than the average income of other Ukrainians.

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And that means that people who got displaced forcibly for the second time were in much more vulnerable position.

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In most of my interviews, those who got displaced for the second time talked a lot about their homes and how it is to lose home for the second time.

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And some stories are so moving that they would love to share with you one of them.

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For instance, one of the respondents was struggling a lot to feel home in her new place when she got displaced after 2014,

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she moved from the north to Mariupol and she really missed her kitchen cups,

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her windows though she told me that home is not about walls, but it's about atmosphere.

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It's about smell, it's about feelings. You experience it there.

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So she saved a lot together with her husband, and they managed to buy a new flat in Mariupol,

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and they spent all their money on decorating this flat and designing it the same way as she had her home in Venice before 2014.

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Her housewarming party was on the 1st of January 2022.

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Can you imagine that she could just enjoy being in her new home for less than two months?

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And then on the 24th of February five, a she could hear the first explosions and she realised that she lost her home again.

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So these stories actually show how moving.

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I'm sorry. A lot of respondents shared with me.

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There is sentiments that they don't get attached to home or as things any longer.

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They're trying to reinvent home in other categories,

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like the place where their children are or where their family is, but not the place which has the specific location.

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Thank you so much for sharing that, Darina. It's so powerful and also shows the incredible value of the research and the

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stories that you've collected in understanding the experiences of of people.

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I, I want to ask as a final question to both of you.

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Obviously, we know that the future is uncertain. And, um, I'm not going to ask you about what's going to happen within the conflict.

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What I wanted to ask was about to renew your the point that you just made about

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hopes and intentions for what comes next in the people that you've spoken to,

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both those who have been internally displaced or twice displaced and and Tania yourself understanding the community,

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um, of people here in the UK and, and the communities that you know,

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what do you think are the kind of hopes and intentions and things that people would like?

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Not not in relation to the conflict, but in relation to their sense of home and, and and what comes next.

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We know in the UK, for example, I think some of the research shows a shift for Ukrainians in terms of their intentions that more

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people are saying that they see a longer term future in the UK than they did at the start of the war,

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for example. Um, and it would be it would be great to hear your thoughts on, on on the future.

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Tania, we'll start with you and then Darina. Thank you.

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Um, it's, uh, really very difficult issue, uh, to discuss because, uh, what I said before, uh,

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especially about, uh, moms with children, we always trying to to do the best for them, right.

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To, uh, to organise everything.

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Uh, they need time to accommodate a new situation, to, uh, adopt to new schools, friends, uh, make friends.

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And, uh, I know, uh, at the beginning of the war, when I moved here and I'm here already almost two and a half years, which is a lot.

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And this is a case for many people. So I remember at the beginning of the war, there were children, especially teenagers, that were very depressed.

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And they wanted to come back a badly. So much to Ukraine.

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And they were, uh, staying at their rooms.

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They didn't want to go out, even though it's, uh, nice and lovely here.

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And it was spring and summer time.

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Uh, they were devastated to lose their friends, to lose, uh, uh, the environment they been growing.

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Um, and, uh, now those children who are staying here for, uh, two plus years and more years, yet they, uh, getting their new friends.

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So I see and I can hear that, uh, you're right that, uh, more and more Ukrainians, uh, started to put down their roots here.

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They, uh, starting having better jobs, uh, learning English, uh,

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understanding how everything works, their children having friends there, uh, studying at schools.

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My son, my son, for example.

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He loves schools here. And, uh, now I'm having this choice whether to come back and get through again, a new adaptation for him or stay here.

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I don't know, I don't have the answer myself.

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What would I do? But, uh, at the same time, I want to tell you, uh, one more short story.

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Uh, at the beginning of the war, I was, uh, hoping that the war will finish, uh, in a few weeks, maybe few months.

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Okay. Not longer than half a year, you know? And we all had this thought process.

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And I remember having this discussions with my friends, we were guessing, uh, when the war will end.

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And I was putting, uh, reminders, uh, to my phone, uh, about this end of the war and all of the reminders, uh, already gone.

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You know, I don't have any more reminders.

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So it's so difficult to to even think about it because you are hoping for the best.

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You are hoping it will be over, but it's still there.

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We are all in limbo.

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And this is also, of course, affecting us, but I hope that when they will have choice, then they can do this choice without, uh, a huge pressure.

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Thank you. Tanya.

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Uh, the well, the decision to return home or stay in host communities depend on lots of various factors and also individual circumstances.

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According to the quantitative survey, among 1000 internally displaced women we conducted,

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over 50% of servant would like to come home to return home as soon as the war is over.

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However, when I conducted the in-depth interviews, a lot of respondents admitted that though they would like to return home,

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they already accepted the idea and the fact that it might never happen in their life.

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There is a special group of people who never hope to return home.

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These are those, for instance, who witnessed horrific events in the cities where they lived before,

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or who underwent harrowing, um, experiences like tortures or extreme forms of violence.

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For instance, one of my respondents talked about how she was burying her neighbours under the trees in her yard and for her.

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And now Mariupol is bombed out houses.

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Is just graves. It's impossible to stay there, and it's impossible to consider it home, because home is always associated with a safe refuge.

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So these people. Definitely. Don't have these hopes of returning home.

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Other considerations behind the decision not to return home are related to possible ecological destructions and catastrophes,

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which might happen in Ukraine. For instance.

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Another respondent who I talked to, she's from.

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She was from Nova Cahokia, a small city in here, some of which was occupied in 2022.

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And she shared with me her hopes that actually she really wanted to return home before 2023, before June, when Russia destroyed the Cahokia Dam.

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And the fact the very fact of destruction of Cahokia Dam in the hershon Oberst made her reconsider her decision.

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For instance, she shared that similar or even worse catastrophes may happen in the future,

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so you'll never know what to get prepared for when Russia is your neighbour.

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Others, for example, talked a lot about people who remained in their hometowns, their neighbours, who, for instance,

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started collaborating with the Russian authorities after occupation of the cities, or whose children went to Russian schools.

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So for people who got displaced from these cities, it's hard to imagine that after their occupation,

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they will come back and they will have to make friends with their neighbours,

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or their children will have to go to the same schools with those who were brainwashed.

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So with all of these factors should be taken into account.

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When international partners and Ukrainian government are designing the plans of recovery,

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the recovery plans shouldn't be just to fight with the idea that people want to return home.

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Those who are displaced should be given the choice and should be given the options to get integrated into their host communities,

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and they will welcome these choices as well.

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Thank you so much to both of you both for discussing what I know is such a difficult topic,

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and also for sharing such incredibly important and vital research findings.

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Thank you. You've been listening to the Migration Oxford podcast.

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I'm Jacki Brodhead, and I'm Robert McNeil.