Return Migrations of Ukrainian Refugees: The Role of National Identity and Pride

We conducted a poll of 1139 Ukrainians who currently live in Poland. 937 of them took refuge after the start of the full-scale russian invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, and the other 202 migrated earlier. Our major focus was on the return intentions of Ukrainians and how these intentions may depend on the feeling of national identity and pride. In the pre-registered hypotheses, we stated that a stronger national identity was positively associated with the willingness to return home and that we could amplify this willingness by making the identity more salient.

In the survey, we randomly exposed individuals to three priming settings. Two of them primed subjects towards enhancing identity and pride feelings, while the third group contained neutral questions for a control group. Then, we measured the key variables of interest (return intentions) and found strong support for the first hypothesis and unexpected results for the other.

One of the most unexpected findings is the negative average effect of “pride priming” on return intentions of forced displaced persons, with a positive gradient along the levels of national pride. In fact, people with initially low levels of pride express strictly negative return intentions, whereas people with high pride are more likely to return. At the same time, pre-war migrants have not been affected by our priming experiment, which suggests more stable staying preferences in this group.

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