The longer the war in Ukraine goes on, the more Europe is likely to be changed by it. Parts of its legacy for the Continent are already written: the heavy economic toll, the surge in defence spending, the race to find alternatives to Russian energy and the forging of unity in the face of Vladimir Putin’s aggression. But it is the exodus of millions of Ukrainians from their battered country that could have the most lasting effect.
Three months since Russia’s invasion, the war has caused the fastest and largest displacement of people in Europe since the second World War. More than 14 million people, the bulk of them women and children, are thought to have fled their homes, of whom more than 6 million have gone elsewhere in Europe. By far the largest share have sought safety in central and eastern Europe. Poland, which received around 100,000 refugees in the previous 30 years, alone has taken in 3.5 million refugees since late February; the population of Warsaw increased by almost 20 per cent in just a few weeks. Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and Moldova have also opened their doors to large influxes crossing their borders with Ukraine. Even Ireland, one of the farthest EU states from the war zone, has taken in around 30,000 refugees.
Mass movement of people on this scale will create a large Ukrainian diaspora in parts of Europe where none previously existed, potentially shaping the Continent’s politics and demographics in profound ways. In Ireland, Ukrainian community infrastructure will in time develop, similar if smaller in scale to that which grew up around other eastern European groups after EU enlargement in 2004. If even a fraction of the Ukrainians who have moved to Poland, Moldova, Hungary or Romania choose to stay, they will still make up those countries’ biggest immigrant communities.
That qualifier — if they choose to stay — is, of course, critical. We know that access to labour markets, which Ukrainians have been granted across the EU, typically results in more people staying in their adopted country. But studies show that other factors also play a role: more educated migrants are more likely to return, as are those who flee to nearby countries. Conversely, having a child lowers the probability of going home, presumably because children quickly become rooted in their adopted home-places.
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The duration of conflict is important: most Kosovans who fled the 78-day war of 1999 later returned, but a far lower proportion of the 700,000 people who fled the Bosnian war of 1992-95 ever went back. And naturally migrants weigh up the prospects of social and economic recovery at home, which is one reason millions of Syrians opt not to return to their country. The United Nations says that as of May 24, 2.1 million Ukrainians had returned; some have already left Ireland and gone home to regions where the dangers posed by Russian advances have passed for now. But the UN says its figure does not indicate “sustainable returns” as the situation across Ukraine remains “highly volatile and unpredictable”.
Ageing population
The sudden demographic shifts brought about by the horrors in Ukraine come at a time of anxiety across the EU about its ageing population, which is expected to peak at almost 450 million in the coming years. The problem is particularly acute in central and eastern Europe; Croatian prime minister Andrej Plenkovic has called it “an almost existential problem for some nations”. Now, overnight, places such as Poland have gone from being countries of net outward migration to ones of immigration — a process that normally takes decades. Were those refugees to stay, their presence would have big effects on labour markets, age profiles and sex ratios.
But if that outlook is uncertain — any effect, if were it to materialise, would be at least partly offset by a decline in birth rates linked to the economic slowdown — it also occurs against a background of demographic disaster in Ukraine itself. More than a quarter of its population has been forced to move over the past three months, some of them leaving behind towns and cities that have been razed by Russian violence (Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned on Friday that the eastern Donbas could become uninhabited as a result of the Russian assault).
Since Ukraine won its independence in 1991, its population has been continuously in decline. Significant emigration in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and low fertility rates since then, have resulted in an ageing population that was especially vulnerable to an external shock. Now life expectancy is set to fall dramatically, and by some estimates the country’s population could decline by a third over the next two decades. The war will end, but Ukraine will live with its tragic legacy for a very long time.