Integration of war refugees from Ukraine? bottom-up and top-down views of Central European second-tier cities

Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine has triggered socio-cultural changes in Central Europe. War refugees, as a factor of social change, overlapped with cultural shift following the integration processes of UE. From this perspective, the integration of war refugees has also become a measure of the evolution of cities towards greater openness and resilience. The title question of integration triggered at least two analytical contexts: the first related to similarities of integration policies employed in the selected cities. The second relates to the perceptions of the war refugees themselves. The perspective of the acting subject can be useful here in answering questions: what is the specificity of war refugeeism, and how does its specificity affect the integration process on the local level? The answer to the questions formulated in the text was not definitive, but the results indicatedvalidity of a regional perspective in interpreting the dynamics of the integration process. The project collected data from second-tier cities: Brno, Kosice, Krakow, Miskolc, Poznan and Uzhhorod. The study employed conceptualizations of integration and social anchoring and the mixed-methods research strategy, using an online survey, in-depth interviews and focus group interviews.