Attitudes Towards Internally and Externally Displaced Persons in Ukraine: Values and Democracy

War in Ukraine which started with Russian full-scale invasion on 24th February 2022 caused mass displacement of Ukrainians both inside and outside Ukraine. According to data provided by UNHCR (15th October 2024) 6752000 Ukrainians are recorded globally as those who applied for temporary protection, asylum or other protection schemes. Among them 6191800 are recorded in Europe and 560200 – beyond Europe. Europe includes EU countries, non-EU countries and Turkey. 3669000 Ukrainians are registered (31 August 2024) as internally displaced. This dramatic situation with external and internal displacement affects attitudes towards externally and internally displaced persons in Ukraine. A quantitative survey was conducted in Ukrainian language among a sample of students specializing in Law, Economics and Psychology at Oles Honchar Dnipro National University and Alfred Nobel University with around 500 valid replies. Data was collected in the beginning of 2024 using an online questionnaire (Qualtrics) with approval of Ethics Commission of the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, University of Lausanne. This research was in the context of the “Attitudes towards migration and society in Ukraine” sub-project embedded in the Swiss National Science Foundation funded NCCR – on the move (National Center of Competence in Research – The Migration-Mobility Nexus) project (205605) on “Attitudes towards migration and democracy in times of crises”. We revealed attitudes of Ukrainians who live in Ukraine during the war distinguishing between attitudes towards legal and illegal externally displaced Ukrainians. We focused on perspectives of reintegration upon their return. In case of attitudes towards internally displaced persons we focused on willingness to support them. In our research we measured democracy related attitudes in general and same democracy related attitudes during the war separately as they can vary. We have chosen freedom of speech, media independence, freedom of political choice on elections and freedom of civil society organisations’ activity as indicators of democracy in Ukraine based on our previous research of citizenship activity of young Ukrainians and democracy perception among young Ukrainians (Bondarevskaya, Krzywosz-Rynkiewicz, Bondar, 2017; Bondarevskaya, Bondar, Krzywosz-Rynkiewicz, 2022). Schwartz theory of basic values (2012) was taken as a basis for analyzing values of Self-Determination, Stimulation, Hedonism, Achievement, Power, Security, Conformity, Tradition, Benevolence and Universalism (measured by PVQ-21) as predictors of attitudes towards internally and externally displaced persons and democracy related attitudes.