Resumen de Return or Settle? Migration Aspirations and Their Impact on Ukrainian Students
Traditional approaches in migration studies are push and pull factors, neoclassical theory of migration and historical-structural approaches. However, as critical migration studies assert, these approaches are not human-centered because self-identification or self-realization of migrants is not adopted, but emphasized are impersonal structural factors as determinants which may push and pull migrants as passive objects. This article, based on qualitative research in the Czech Republic and Ukraine, is aimed at young Ukrainian participants who in their 15-16-years-old migrated as students at High school in Uni?ov, Czech Republic, while their parents stayed in Ukraine. Among participants are voluntary migrants, but also those who were “forced” by their parents to migrate. Their aspirations are ambiguous. First group of participants wanted to settle in their country of immigration while those “forced” to migrate had ambitions to go back to Ukraine. This article shows that aspirations, instead of objective structural factors, are more decisive for creating boundaries between participants.
