The afterlives of the ‘migration crisis’ and its hidden labours: Ukrainian displacement post-2022

Abstract

Migration has become increasingly synonymous with ‘crisis’. Drawing on longitudinal ethnographic fieldwork with Ukrainian nationals in Warsaw (2020–2025), this article asks what ‘crisis times’ mean for migration research methodologically and what remains obscured when forced displacement is narrated as crisis. It contributes to debates on the temporalities and geographies of crisis by engaging critiques of the ‘migration crisis industry’ alongside post-colonial, critical race and feminist perspectives that re-read crisis as ordinariness and duress. The article argues that crisis frameworks not only reproduce state emergencies but also shape knowledge production, delimiting what becomes knowable. Framing crisis as a time-bound event normalises slow and protracted forms of harm that operate beyond emergency frameworks and risk remaining invisibilised. While Ukrainian displacement initially generated accounts of rapid solidarity and ‘unprecedented’ responses, war fatigue and shrinking humanitarian funding have shifted crisis management onto migrant communities themselves, rendering crisis slow, ordinary and prolonged. Moving beyond exceptionalist understandings, the article shows how crisis becomes embedded in daily routines of communal care among displaced individuals and communities. Finally, it calls for longitudinal ethnography and practices of ‘ethnographic returning’ to bear witness to the long-term unfolding of harms that endure beyond the spectacular.