Experiences of Ukrainian migrant workers in Europe – experiencing decent work?

The project “Experiences of Ukrainian migrant workers in Europe – experiencing decent work?” explores how migrants from Ukraine experience work in other European countries, especially with regard to the dimensions of democracy at work and inequality. The situation before and after the war presents a kind of natural experiment, because access to labor markets was massively facilitated (through the Temporary Protection Directive 2001/55/EC (EC 2022) after the outbreak of the war. At the same time, one can expect variation in the experiences of Ukrainian migrant workers in different European labor markets because these different features with regard to the dimensions of “decent work” as defined by the ILO (1999) (ETUI 2023). The project is a "hop on" project to the NWO VICI project "Working Democracy" by Prof. Lisa Herzog, Groningen, run by Prof. Tetiana Stepura in collaboration with the project team. Given the focus of the project “Working democracy” on democratic experiences at work (structures of representation for workers, voice at work, etc.), and given Prof. Stepura’s expertise on inequality (e.g. wage inequality between migrants and native workers), we combine these dimensions. We have developed a survey about the work experience of Ukrainians working in other European countries, and circulated it among Ukrainians mostly in Germany, Poland, Czech Republic, and the Netherlands. The goal is to understand how Ukrainians experience work in European countries, what difference the Temporary Protection Directive makes, and what the possible obstacles for experiencing decent work are.