Ukrainian Migration to Europe: Policies, Practices and Perspectives

This issue of Central and Eastern Europe Migration Review (CEEMR) is dedicated to migratory flows from one of the largest source countries for the European Union (EU). Almost a decade ago, Düvell (2006) even referred to Ukraine as Europe’s Mexico. Ukraine indeed seems to have the second-largest migration corridor in the world, the US–Mexico corridor being the largest (Migration Policy Centre 2013). This comparison, however, refers more to the migration corridor between Ukraine and Russia. Estimates of the migration flows between these two countries are really impressive, though they vary greatly between fewer than 100 000 and more than 3.5 million (Migration Policy Centre 2013). One of the explanations for the great disparity between these estimates is the lack of migration regulations (it is a visa-free regime for Ukrainians in Russia) and significant undocumented migration.1 When it comes to migration from Ukraine to the EU, the general pattern and the numbers seem to be different. There is no doubt that estimates of Ukrainian migrants in Europe might also be somewhat imprecise, due to the lack of a fully standardised definition and to the specifics of migrant statistics in member-states. Notwithstanding significant undocumented migratory movements, due to its visa policies, the EU obviously has more instruments for regulating and registering the inflow of Ukrainian migrants. Here the estimates from different sources vary at around 1 million. According to Eurostat (2011, 2014) Ukrainian nationals currently represent the fifth-largest migrant group in the EU (after Turks, Moroccans, Chinese and Indians). Eurostat (2014) puts the total number of Ukrainian residents currently living in the EU as high as 634 851 persons. Given the high numbers of Ukrainian nationals (and the Ukrainian-born) living in Europe, the dearth of academic books and monothematic issues of scientific journals focused on Ukrainian migration is striking.