Since Russia’s full-scale invasion, more than 200,000 Ukrainians have arrived in the UK. Thousands of children have started new schools, learnt English, made friends and become part of local communities. Yet, unlike many refugee populations, they live under temporary protection visas and are expected to return to Ukraine once the war ends, even though nobody knows when, if or how that will happen.
For adults, this uncertainty often revolves around work and housing as they rebuild their lives. Children face a different challenge as they build their lives for the first time. Many are becoming more fluent in English than in Ukrainian. They spend weekdays in British schools while also learning Ukrainian history, traditions and language from their families and at Saturday schools. As they grow up, they are learning to navigate two countries, two cultures and two possible futures, unsure which will ultimately become home.
Much research has examined refugee integration and the educational experiences of displaced children. We know far less about what it means to grow up when you are expected to build a life in one country while preparing for a future in another. Too often, decisions about education, identity and integration are made about children rather than with them.
My project explores these questions through what I call pedagogies of exile: the everyday ways in which parents, teachers and community organisations seek to sustain Ukrainian identity during wartime displacement. Rather than seeing children as passive recipients of these efforts, I want to understand how they interpret, negotiate and sometimes reshape them in everyday life at home, at school and within the wider community.
Over three years, I will work with twenty Ukrainian families in Nottingham and Leicester, using interviews alongside child-centred, creative activities such as drawing, storytelling, identity mapping and discussions around everyday photographs. These approaches allow children to express their own experiences of belonging, language and imagined futures, placing their voices at the heart of the research.
Ultimately, my project asks what it means to grow up in exile when the future remains uncertain. What happens when children become increasingly rooted in one country while being expected to imagine their future in another? By listening to children’s own experiences, I hope to deepen our understanding of how war, displacement and uncertainty shape not only childhood but also the future of nations.