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Centre of Migration Research
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Jeremy Caldeira, Paweł Kaczmarczyk. 2026.

Navigating Aspirations and Abilities: Ukrainian Refugee Integration in Poland’s Labour Market.

 

Journal of International Migration and Integration

Caldeira, J.R., Kaczmarczyk, P. Navigating Aspirations and Abilities: Ukrainian Refugee Integration in Poland’s Labour Market. Int. Migration & Integration (2026). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12134-025-01349-8


Abstract

Since the further escalation of Russian aggression against Ukraine in 2022, millions of Ukrainians have been forced to flee, with many arriving in Poland. The case of Ukrainian refugees in Poland provides a unique opportunity to study a labour market integration environment where host-country legislation is favourable for integration, and the refugee group has both close-cultural ties to the host country and prior migration experience in the host country. This article investigates which factors influence successful labour market integration of Ukrainian refugees into the Polish labour market, evaluated via employment status and skills matching, and using the lens of the aspiration-ability model (AAM) to account for the unique situation of Ukrainian refugees. We show that human capital characteristics, such as education and host-language skills, matter most in job acquisition. However, most high-skilled refugees are found to be over-skilled, likely not because of human capital-related variables but rather in the face of unfavourable labour market structures. We arrive at these conclusions first using the AAM to categorise key theoretical factors of labour market integration and also by running a latent class analysis to characterise refugees into three distinct categories according to their aspirations and abilities: transitional refugee families, high-skilled refugees, and family-oriented future-returner refugees. We further posit that while the results of our study may be hard to replicate due to the uniqueness of the legal situation involving Ukrainians in Poland, they reveal lessons in creating a favourable integration environment, including necessary structural conditions.

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