How Reception and Integration Policies and Experiences in the Host Country Affect Refugee Return Aspiration: A Comparative Analysis of Ukrainian Refugees in the Nordic Countries.

Almost three years has passed since the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, which led millions of Ukrainians to flee their homes and country. While some have already returned, the majority of those who fled are still faced with an unsecure and unstable future, as they have been granted collective, temporary protection in most European countries, with currently no pathway to permanent residence in most host countries. But as the war prolongs, what are the return aspirations among the Ukrainian refugees? Further, how do different reception and integration experiences and policies in the host country affect these aspirations? Although Europe has met the influx of Ukrainian refugees with a more unified response than earlier influxes of protection seekers, there are still large cross-national differences in the countries’ reception, settlement and integration policies for this group (Hernes et al 2023). In this regard, the Nordic countries provide particularly relevant cases for comparative analysis. Although they share many similarities as Social-Democratic welfare states, they have developed fundamentally different reception and integration policies for Ukrainian refugees. For example, while Sweden has been deemed to have some of the most restrictive policies Ukrainian refugees in Europe, Norway and Denmark have had some of Europe’s most extensive rights to integration measures, with Finland placed in-between its Nordic neighbours (Hernes et al. 2023). An established finding in the literature on migration return aspirations and decisions is that the longer refugees live in the host country, the less inclined they are to return (Carling and Pettersen 2014; Willmann-Robleda 2022; Balcilar and Nugent 2019; Brekke 2001a; 2001b). However, there is scarce knowledge about how the initial reception and integration process and policies in the host country affect the refugees’ aspirations to return or not. This study addresses this research gap, by studying a similar group (Ukrainian refugees) in four countries with diverging policies towards this group. This article builds on an extensive data collection from a larger comparative research project, the NOR-RETIN project: https://www.oslomet.no/en/research/research-projects/integration-or-return-for-ukrainian-refugees. In the article, we combine in-depth policy analysis of the Nordic countries’ reception and integration policies towards Ukrainian refugees with comparative analysis of four surveys to Ukrainian refugees in Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland conducted in 2024. The study’s unique and broad data goes beyond earlier studies that has focused on how structural conditions in the host country may determine return aspirations (Zakirova and Buzurukov 2019; Koser and Kuschminder 2015; Al Husein and Wagner 2020), to also investigate how the refugees’ personal reception and integration experience may affect return aspirations, e.g., concerning employment, their (and their children’s) social integration and their assessment of the reception in the host country.