Youth migration during war: Triggers of positive aspirations and preservation of human resources in Ukraine

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Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has become an existential challenge and a trigger of the migration crisis. The study aims to identify migration intentions of youth and factors for the preservation of the young population in Ukraine (a case study of university youth). The study conducts a sociological survey using a Google Forms questionnaire. The sample was formed by the method of three-stage selection: (1) quotas for the share of undergraduate and graduate students; (2) the higher education institutions in Ukraine were selected by the criterion of the number of students and specialties; and (3) field of knowledge. The sample size is calculated based on the resampling method and included 2,200 people from all regions in Ukraine (except Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Dnipropetrovsk oblasts). The study reveals that 10% of students plan to go abroad in the near future before graduation, 30% plan to stay in Ukraine only if the socio-economic situation improves after the end of the war, and 28.3% plan to migrate after graduation. The reasons for positive migration aspirations among students are socio-economic and security issues (14.9% can find a job abroad in the short term, 11.1% see the lack of further prospects in Ukraine even after the end of the war). Monitoring of youth migration processes across two vectors – current volumes and potential aspirations – can serve as an information and analytical basis for the development of a new vision of the country’s migration security strategy to preserve human resources in Ukraine.

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    • Figure 1. Employment status of young people in Ukraine while studying
    • Figure 2. Problems of development of the educational sphere and labor market in Ukraine: A scoring assessment of university youth
    • Figure 3. Students’ intentions regarding employment abroad after graduation from a higher educational institution in Ukraine
    • Table 1. Sample characteristics
    • Table 2. Responses to the question “Where do you see your future?” depending on the experience of participation in the programs of international student exchange and employment abroad, %
    • Table 3. Results of responses to the question “Would you like to migrate for permanent residence?” depending on the experience of youth civic engagement, %
    • Table 4. Results of responses to the question “Where do you see your future?” depending on the oblast of residence of students before entering the higher educational institution, %
    • Table 5. The main factors that could keep young people from going abroad in terms of their intentions after graduation from a higher educational institution in Ukraine, %
    • Conceptualization
      Taras Vasyltsiv, Olha Mulska
    • Formal Analysis
      Taras Vasyltsiv, Olha Mulska, Ihor Baranyak
    • Investigation
      Taras Vasyltsiv, Ruslan Lupak, Olha Mulska, Olha Levytska, Ihor Baranyak
    • Methodology
      Taras Vasyltsiv, Olha Mulska
    • Project administration
      Taras Vasyltsiv
    • Supervision
      Taras Vasyltsiv, Ruslan Lupak
    • Writing – original draft
      Taras Vasyltsiv, Ruslan Lupak, Olha Mulska, Olha Levytska, Ihor Baranyak
    • Writing – review & editing
      Taras Vasyltsiv, Ruslan Lupak, Olha Mulska, Olha Levytska, Ihor Baranyak
    • Data curation
      Ruslan Lupak, Olha Mulska, Olha Levytska
    • Resources
      Ruslan Lupak, Olha Levytska
    • Validation
      Ruslan Lupak, Olha Mulska, Olha Levytska
    • Visualization
      Olha Levytska