Call for Paper - “Migration from the East and the Policies of Receiving States: Challenges, Responses, and Consequences.”

On 24 February 2026, the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale aggression against Ukraine took place. This event called into question the very existence of Ukraine as a sovereign state and had a dramatic impact on the lives of millions of Ukrainians. Many of them decided to leave the country, undertaking forced migration. Fleeing the war, they arrived in numerous Central European countries, including Poland, joining Ukrainians from eastern Ukraine, which had already been affected since 2014 by a (limited in scale) Russian aggression. They share a similar fate with thousands of Belarusians who, after 2020, fled repression imposed by the regime of Alexander Lukashenko.

The massive and unprecedented scale of migration from the East has not remained without consequences for the functioning of the political systems of states hosting war and political refugees. Despite linguistic, cultural, and historical proximity among the nations of Central and Eastern Europe, as well as the exceptional and compassion-evoking circumstances under which Ukrainians and Belarusians arrived in countries such as Poland, Lithuania, and Romania, interethnic tensions have begun to emerge within some host societies (for example, in Poland). “War fatigue,” a growing sense of insecurity, and the impact of Russian disinformation have begun to take their toll.

The aim of this volume is to address the following questions: how migration from the East, driven by war and political persecution, has influenced the policies of receiving states; how migrants have adapted to a new socio-political reality; how their attitudes toward host societies have evolved; and how political leaders in the region have managed migration processes and whether — and to what extent — migration has been politically instrumentalized.

Deadline: 17 of August.