“Fear for children”, Mother-Child Dyad and Future Mobility Trajectories of Displaced Ukrainians in Czechia and Poland: Children as a Factor for Fleeing and Living after the Full-Scale Invasion

Abstract

This article addresses the issue of children’s care-receiving practices in the context of Ukrainian displacement in Czechia and Poland. Single mothers often need to care for their children alone, creating specific family power dynamics, especially in the setting of transnational reconfiguration, as fathers remain in Ukraine. This article aims to adopt the subjective bottom-up perception of connections associated with navigation in the new environment and shows that power dynamics is on the side of children as they are the dominant driver in the living arrangement in a new country and in the case of future mobility trajectories of the families. Using a qualitative methodology, drawing on 56 semi-structured interviews with Ukrainian displaced women in Czechia and Poland in 2023, this paper sheds light on the issue of family in the war situation. While studying the position of children in migration studies is not new, examining displaced family arrangements offers promising new insights into this topic. The focus on children will be provided from the perspective of Ukrainian female participants living in Czechia and Poland, using the concept of “doing family”.