Probable Consequences of European Integration for the Development of Migration Processes in Ukraine

Abstract

Population losses caused by the war, in particular forced migration abroad, are an obvious challenge to the stability of Ukraine, and can become a serious brake on its post-war recovery and development. Future EU membership carries with it the risk of further departure of citizens who will have the right to live, work, and study freely on the territory of a united Europe. In order to find adequate answers to possible problems in a timely manner, it is necessary to try to identify the most likely direction of the development of the migration situation in the context of European integration, which is the purpose of this article. Its novelty lies in the substantiation of the possible volumes of migration, its dynamics, composition and consequences under the influence of Ukraine’s accession to the European Union. The analysis is based on the most widely used theoretical approaches to explaining migration, data on intra-European migration movements after previous EU enlargements, as well as the migration experience of Ukrainians in recent decades. When processing factual and analytical material, historical, logical, comparative methods, the method of scientific abstraction are used. Both theoretical considerations and actual data indicate a natural short-term intensification of migration of the population of the countries joining the EU. As a result of the war, the destruction of the economy, unemployment and impoverishment of the population, the exodus from Ukraine may be even larger. Additional ground for such an assumption is the experience of labor migration, which has been used by Ukrainians since the 1990s as a strategy for survival in crisis conditionst. At the same time, joining the EU, as it was proven by previous enlargements, contributes to the increase of labor productivity, the activation of the economy, the inflow of foreign investments and, as a result, the gradual increase of wages and the welfare of the population, which in the context of migration reduces the motivation to leave and determines the return. Citizens of Ukraine, as a democratic state, will independently decide whether to stay in the country, leave it or return to its territory. At the same time, the state can provide institutional and informational support to migrants, protect the interests of its citizens abroad, and create conditions for return. The development of migration policy taking into account the perspective of Ukraine’s accession to the EU is extremely relevant not only from a scientific, but also from a practical point of view.