The article analyses the transformations of the Ukrainian–Slovak borderland under the conditions of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine. Drawing on qualitative empirical research (24 semi-structured interviews conducted in 2023–2024) and ethnographic observations, it attempts to trace how the functional meaning of the border and its everyday perception by the residents of borderland communities are changing. The study centres on the concept of ‘borderscapes’, which makes it possible to interpret the border as a dynamic socio-spatial construct formed at the intersection of embodied experience, material infrastructure, institutions, practices and narratives. In wartime, the border becomes not only an instrument of security but also a resource of everyday resilience that reorganises routine interactions, forms of solidarity and moral boundaries in Ukrainian–Slovak borderland communities. The research shows how the narrativisation of the traumatic experience of war transforms the border from a space of cross-border economic interaction into a multi-layered security infrastructure, a resource of protection and a channel of selective mobility. The war activates processes of ‘affective bordering’ within which emotional reactions and feelings of threat and solidarity shape new representations of ‘us’ and ‘them’ – both in inter-national and intra-Ukrainian dimensions. The analysis identifies gender-asymmetrical mobility regimes, the delegitimisation of the informal borderland economy, and the growing role of borderland communities as agents of social resilience, solidarity and cross-border cooperation.
This article examines Kazakhstan’s external labour migration through the lens of transnational mobility and socio-legal governance. While Kazakhstan is often analysed as a destination for migrant labour within Central Asia, it is increasingly connected to international labour markets as a country of origin for outward labour migration. Drawing on qualitative interviews with Kazakh migrants working in Russia, South Korea, Turkey, the United Kingdom, Germany, Belgium and the United States, the study explores how migrants navigate diverse regulatory environments that structure contemporary transnational labour mobility. Adopting a socio-legal perspective, the article focuses on how formal migration regimes are interpreted and enacted through migrants’ everyday practices. The findings demonstrate that, while wage differentials and labour-market inequalities remain key motivations for migration, migrants’ experiences are also shaped by complex visa regimes, temporary work programmes and differentiated migration policies across destination countries. Migrants rely heavily on transnational social networks, diaspora communities and digital communication platforms to interpret bureaucratic procedures, access employment opportunities and manage legal uncertainty. By foregrounding migrants’ narratives, the study shows how migration governance operates in practice through the interaction of formal regulations and socially embedded informal infrastructures, contributing to broader debates on migration regimes and transnational mobility.
The posting of workers has been fiercely discussed and analysed as a mechanism of social dumping in the Western European labour markets. This paper takes a reverse perspective and analyses the posting of workers in Slovakia as an Eastern European case whereby posting is presented as a multifaceted labour mobility instrument. We combine a review of the national regulatory framework and administrative data with stakeholder interviews to provide a rich account of why and how posting is used by employers and regulated and enforced by public authorities. We show that, while posting is a specific instrument of short-term intra-EU mobility formally enabling the mobility of services, it effectively plays a much wider role, transcending the low-cost competitiveness objective. We argue that the rise and embedding of posting in Slovakia is sustained by a specific regulatory and labour market context which is reliant on a flexible workforce with a weak enforcement of labour rights and characterised by erratic policy changes. Our study illustrates that the divide in the posting literature between sending and receiving countries is becoming outdated because supposed ‘sending’ countries like Slovakia are receiving substantial numbers of posted workers; they are also increasingly posting in a different way to earlier.
This editorial introduction situates research on Ukrainian refugees within broader trends in migration studies. It seeks to bridge the gap between critical migration studies and the growing body of scholarship on refugees from Ukraine. The articles in this special section introduce new themes and perspectives to the study of migration processes involving Ukrainian refugees. They also offer new analytical lenses through which these processes can be examined, including migration infrastructures, institutional practices, and displaced persons’ own understandings of temporariness. Importantly, the aim is to move beyond understanding Ukrainian refugees solely through the lens of forced displacement. Viewing them primarily as victims limits our understanding of their experiences and other key aspects of their lives. This special section seeks to broaden that perspective by introducing new analytical approaches and identifying promising directions for future research.
International retirement migration (IRM) is a constantly diversifying phenomenon, in which new concepts and geographies are emerging and new social groups are becoming involved. In this paper, we intend to fill a research gap in terms of the geographical scope of IRM by focusing on Hungary as a host country for a growing number of older migrants from Western European countries. The paper focuses, in particular, on older German citizens settled in rural Hungary, who constitute the largest group of Western European migrants illustrated both by statistical data and empirical evidence. Based on semi-structured interviews conducted with German migrants over 50 years of age living in small peripheral villages, we show how they explain and justify their decision to relocate to Hungary. Based on this empirical evidence, we demonstrate the complex and changing nexus of economic, lifestyle-oriented, political and ideological motivations shaping the decision to migrate. While, regardless of the period of migration, economic and lifestyle-oriented considerations can be identified as determining factors in migration decisions, the narratives of those German citizens aged over 50 who have relocated since the mid-2010s emphasise their dissatisfaction with the political and social circumstances in their home country as a primary incentive to migrate and portraying Hungary as an attractive destination in political and ideological terms.
