Post-2022 Russian War Migration and Host Country Policies

This book provides a comprehensive empirical analysis of how post-2022 Russian war migration has been transforming host societies and migration policies across eight countries in Europe and Asia, capturing the complex institutional and social shifts triggered by the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a major geopolitical turning point.

Readers gain a deeper understanding of how mass war mobilization forces host nations to redefine their security strategies and social inclusion frameworks. The book delivers these insights through an original typology of migration policies—ranging from the "unwelcoming" approaches of Poland and Estonia to the "open-door" strategies of Armenia and Kazakhstan. A key element is its unique methodological triangulation, combining multi-sited ethnography with a sociological toolkit and media discourse analysis. Drawing on 163 in-person interviews conducted by an international research team, the volume moves beyond standard Russia-West binaries to reveal the lived experiences of migrants and evolving tensions within host communities.

This book is valuable for academic experts and researchers in anthropology, sociology, migration studies, and political science, as well as policymakers and civil society activists working on refugee integration and border management. It also serves as an essential resource for undergraduate and graduate students in international relations and human geography, alongside general readers interested in the geopolitical consequences of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Tomasz Rawski is a political and cultural sociologist, and is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Sociology, University of Warsaw, Poland. His research focus is on memory politics, nationalism/war and state socialism in contemporary Eastern Europe and beyond. He published Pathways to Agonism. Disputed Territories and Memory (2025, with C. Horvath) and Bosniak Nationalism. Nation-Building Strategies After 1995 (2019, in Polish), as well as articles in renowned international journals. Rawski participated in international projects on memory politics and wars, including H2020: DisTerrMem (leader of the Polish team) and H2020: REPAST. He was a visiting scholar at University College London, Uppsala University, University of Bologna and others.

Zuzanna Bogumił works at the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Warsaw. She specializes in memory studies with a special focus on memories of Soviet repressions and the entanglements between memory and region in Central and Eastern Europe. Among her books are: More than Alive: The Dead, Orthodoxy and Remembrance in Post-Soviet Russia (with T. Voronina, 2023), Gulag Memories: The Rediscovery and Commemoration of Russia's Repressive Past (2018).

Katarzyna Roman-Rawska is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland. She is a literary scholar, sociologist, publicist, as well as literary author and translator. Roman-Rawska published The Dormition of Anisa (2024, in Polish) and The New Realism in Post-1991 Russian Literary Field (2020, in Polish), among other publications. She works on the intersection of culture and politics as well as anti-regime and anti-war resistance in contemporary Russia.