Crossing the border: EU membership assessment by Ukrainian refugees in early 2022

Abstract

The Russian invasion at the beginning of 2022 forced many Ukrainians to find refuge in safer places. Using unique survey data collected in the early days of the war, this research note turns to Ukrainian refugees’ opinions in two host countries: Germany and Poland. We are interested in how this – otherwise hard-to-reach und so far understudied – group of people evaluated their country’s potential European Union (EU) accession at that very specific moment in time, whether there existed differences in perceptions between the interviewees in the two countries, and what the predictors might have been. Overall, our findings indicate that the Ukrainian refugees interviewed generally supported Ukraine's accession to the EU, with no significant differences observed between the two host countries. Furthermore, both utilitarian and identity-driven factors played minor roles in shaping support for a future EU membership. These insights are not only valuable for academic research but also hold relevance for political stakeholders at both national and EU level.

Keywords

• EU membership
• Ukrainian refugees
• Germany
• Poland
• social media sampling