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Subjective Well-being of Ukrainian Migrants in Poland During the War: the Role of Absolute and Relative Income
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DOI：10.1007/s11205-026-03919-4.png)
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Abstract
En 中文
In the wake of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Poland has become a key destination for not only economic migrants (pre-war migrants), but also war refugees (post-war migrants) from Ukraine. This study attends to the levels and changes in their subjective well-being (SWB) in times of the war using data from two-wave surveys, of 932 Ukrainian migrants and of 941 Poles - collected in 2024. Employing a Cross-Lagged Panel Model, we assess reciprocal relations over time to better understand longitudinal links in SWB dynamics. Particularly, we examine how absolute and relative income contribute to SWB (disaggregated into life satisfaction, positive, and negative affects) among Ukrainian migrants versus Poles. Findings show that Ukrainians’ SWB is lower, less stable, and more strongly associated with income variables than Poles’ SWB. Both absolute and relative income emerged as temporal predictors of life satisfaction (but not affective SWB), particularly among pre-war migrants, with income comparisons to other migrants being more closely linked to their SWB than comparisons with Poles. For post-war migrants facing numerous non-economic challenges such as trauma and family separation, intangible factors seem to be more important for their SWB which is also lower than among pre-war migrants. Additionally, higher levels of negative affect predict a decline in relative income of post-war migrants, i.e., their social position in a migrant group. Our results highlight the complexity and importance of income comparisons for migrants’ life satisfaction acknowledging the smaller role of tangible factors in shaping SWB among forced migrants.
Keywords:
Ukrainian migration
Subjective well-being
Relative income
War refugees
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