Authors

Raluca Bejan¹;  ¹ Dalhousie University, Canada

Discussion

This paper draws from empirical qualitative data, consisting of 51 interviews conducted in the summer of 2022 with civil society stakeholders and state officials from Romania, one of Ukraine’s neighbouring countries, to discuss: (1) what role has ethnicity played in the welcoming of Ukrainians in Romania and (2) the use of race as a category of analysis to delineate who has received better service and better border reception. 

This piece will focus on the difference between Roma and non-Roma people in terms of service provision as well as the racism of Ukrainian and Romanian nationals towards ethnic Romani people. The paper will also discuss the role of nationality as an axe of exclusion. The focus will be here on the international students and their status as non-citizens of Ukraine in contributing to their exclusion. The paper will also discuss class, as the all-encompassing axe of differentiation. Based on the interview data collected it appears that those Ukrainians that were able to move towards Romania but also out of Romania were those that disposed of additional income. In the words of one participant: “The poor never got out. They are there right now, getting bombed.” 

A clear understanding of why and how certain groups of displaced people are seen as deserving or underserving of protection, of what forms of refugee determination allocate better rights and access to these rights, and of what matters most in the logic of attributing value to certain groups of people needing humanitarian assistance is important in terms of policy responses, since international and national protection schemes of granting mobility rights, both within the EU and beyond are always guided by identitarian valuations (i.e., race, class and nationality).