Beyond refugee camps: housing solutions for war refugees from Ukraine in Poland

Abstract In the wake of the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Poland received the greatest number of refugees. While for some it was a transit country and a significant number returned to Ukraine following the stabilisation of the front, nearly one million refugees remained in Poland on a long-term basis. The majority were women with children, the elderly, and people with disabilities. It was the gravest humanitarian crisis in Poland’s post-World War II history. The existing Polish reception infrastructure for refugees proved entirely inadequate to accommodate such a large and sudden arrival of people. Under a special law on assistance to refugees from Ukraine, the Polish government introduced alternative forms of short- and long-term accommodation that departed from the traditional model of refugee camps. These included shelters at reception points, collective accommodation centres, and subsidised hosting in private homes. This article aims to critically evaluate this refugee housing governance, with particular emphasis on collective accommodation facilities and private hosting arrangements in Polish households. The study draws on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Western Poland between 2022 and 2025. The issues are presented in a process-oriented manner, taking into account the evolution of legal regulations which at some point led to refugee commodification and overlapping of the schemes.