Call for Papers for the Workshop: Ukrainian (Working) Lives – Vulnerabilities, Shifting Geographies, Resistance

Four years after the start of the Russian full-scale invasion preceded by eight years of Russian war
of aggression against Ukraine, resilience, heroism, and national unity have become dominant terms
to describe Ukraine’s outstanding defense and perseverance. This workshop will focus on how
omnipresent violence, shifting borders, mobilization, occupation, and infrastructural destruction
have reshaped everyday working lives and trajectories, how the war has transformed the country's
economic geography and thereby changed the labor market, while also producing new
vulnerabilities (war injuries, psychological trauma, housing loss, and material precariousness),
alongside profound gendered transformations (military mobilization, restrictions on men’s
mobility). We aim at exploring new or transformed forms of agency in Ukraine at work (multiple
ways in which labor is performed, reorganized, interrupted, displaced, or reinvented under
conditions of war).

Particular attention will be paid to professional sectors and social groups based on skills rather than
education, including agriculture, care work, transport, trade, industry, along the workers of public
services, as these groups have received less media and scholarly attention, The workshop will take
into account multiple and intersecting forms of mobility: internal displacement, migration abroad,
circular and commuting migration, as well as the experiences of those who have remained in areas
under constant threat.

The workshop focuses on wartime Ukraine, from 2014 to the present, with a particular interest on
the period after the full-scale Russian invasion of February 2022, understood as a prolonged and
transformative condition rather than a temporary rupture. Spatially, it adopts a multi-scalar
perspective, encompassing front-line and occupied territories, rear areas, rural regions, small and
medium-sized towns, and metropolitan centers, as well as transnational spaces shaped by labor
migration and displacement.

Organized by the French-German Centre Marc Bloch in Berlin, the ZOiS and the KIU Competence
Network Interdisciplinary Ukrainian Studies Frankfurt (Oder) – Berlin, the workshop aims to foster
dialogue between scholars working in different national, disciplinary, and methodological
traditions, and to connect empirical research on Ukraine with broader debates on war, labor,
migration, and democracy in Europe. It prioritizes research based on fieldwork (interviews,
observations, ethnography), whether qualitative or mixed (including quantitative data). Its
overarching objective is to make visible lives, places, and biographies, highlighting how labor,
migration, gender, and violence intersect in individual strategies, forms of adaptation, and
everyday resistance to war-induced constraints.

Proposals may focus on, but are not limited to, the following topics:

Economic Geography under Fire
How has the war transformed Ukraine’s economic geography, including the relocation of activities
from occupied or threatened areas, the emergence of rear-area economies, and the persistence or
reinforcement of metropolitan labor markets?

Agricultural Work in a War Zone
How has the inaccessibility and dangerousness of farmland (occupation, mining, front-line
proximity) reshaped agricultural labor, seasonal work, and rural livelihoods?
War Injuries, Disability, War-related vulnerabilities
What are the actual employment conditions and future prospects for war veterans with physical and
psychological disabilities? For internal displaced workers? How mobilization and migration related
to the war have renewed internal demand for paid care work related to the elderly? For work on
reconstruction sites?

War-related Migration and Labor Markets
How does pre-war labor migration interact with war-induced migration under EU temporary
protection? How do internal labor mobility and forced internal displacement compete or overlap?
How have war and geopolitics reshaped labor migration trajectories previously oriented toward the
Russian Federation? What professional and geographic reconfigurations have emerged since 2014
and even more since 2022?

Labor Shortages and Recruitment Strategies
How do local actors respond to labor shortages caused by mobilization and emigration? What are
the prospects for non-European foreign labor in sectors under pressure (construction, logistics,
agriculture, etc.)?

Submission Guidelines

The workshop will take place on April 22, 2026, at the Centre Marc Bloch in Berlin.Participants
will be asked to share a short paper (ca 2,000 words) in advance of the workshop and deliver a 15
minute in-person presentation. Ukrainian colleagues unable to attend in person will have the
possibility to present online. The working language of the workshop will be English. A publication
of the contributions, either as a peer-reviewed special issue or an edited volume, is planned.

We welcome proposals from various academic disciplines. Early-career researchers are particularly
encouraged to submit a proposal. In accordance with the travel policies of our institutions,
participants are expected to prioritize train travel, especially for journeys of under eight hours.
Travel expenses within Europe and accommodation will be covered.

Please submit your proposal (title of the paper, abstract of max. 500 words in English) and a short
CV (max. 150 words) in a single PDF file by February 20, 2026. Please direct your proposal and
any inquiries to ukrainianworkinglives@cmb.hu-berlin.de. Participants will be notified by 28
February.

Organizing team: Sabine von Löwis (ZOIS), Nathalie Moine (CMB), Fabien Théofilakis (CMB),
Susann Worschech (KIU Competence Network Interdisciplinary Ukrainian Studies Frankfurt (Oder) – Berlin), Tatiana Zhurzhenko (ZOIS)