Report on the public lecture about Ukraine on the topic “The well-being of Ukrainian children with the experience of forced displacement in the education systems of EU member states” given by Ivan Posylnyi
We continue publishing reports on the series of public lectures titled "Ukraine Between History and Modernity: War Challenges, Historical Narratives, and a Conflict of Interpretations", the project was funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). Our partner in the implementation of this project is the German Studies Center (ZDS) at Peking University, FU Berlin.
A series of public lectures at the Willy Brandt Center for German and European Studies (WBZ) was continued on November 28, 2024, with the lecture by the doctoral researcher from the University of Warsaw Ivan Posylnyi. This lecture on the topic “The well-being of Ukrainian children with the experience of forced displacement in the education systems of EU member states” was the fourth one of the series.
As it was announced during the previous lectures of the series, the idea of this project is to involve Ukrainian experts in interdisciplinary coverage of current issues of history and modernity in Ukraine and to present researches related to the challenges of Russia’s war against Ukraine, which began in 2014 and as the full-scale war in February 2022 continues to this day, with a lot of destruction and civilian casualties as a result of Russian shelling of Ukraine.
In her opening remarks, the project scientific coordinator, Prof. Oksana Danylenko, emphasized:
“Our speaker today, Ivan Posylnyi, is a Luhansk-born Ukrainian sociologist. Russia started war against Ukraine with the annexation of Crimea and the seizure of parts of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions in 2014. The founder of everyday life sociology, the famous Alfred Schutz, wrote that every situation is biographically determined. It seems to me that Ivan's choice of these very topics for his research is also determined in such a way. And today during the lecture you have a unique opportunity to ask questions not only directly on the topic of the lecture, but you also have a chance to ask about other studies and courses that Ivan teaches at the University of Warsaw. One of the courses is about the history of Donbas, where Ivan is from. Present here Erasmus students, who are attending the course "Ukraine between East and West", taught by prof. Sören Brinkmann, have a chance to ask Ivan about various issues of the history of Donbas”.
The lecture by Ivan Posylnyi focused on the well-being of children and adolescents from Ukraine in EU member states' schools. Based on his own research and the studies done by his colleagues around Europe, he discussed how education systems in selected EU member states responded to the influx of Ukrainian children with displacement experiences, and especially how relocation affected their well-being. According to the speaker, a crucial premise of the issue discussed during the lecture, was children's "world left behind" in Ukraine - their friends, relatives (often fathers and older brothers), old habits, private spaces (own rooms where children could find comfort). While the new reality in host countries was hardly ever hostile - institutional solutions provided a good deal of help to refugee children - feeling stressed still was a prevailing experience in the first two years since the Russian full-scale invasion.
As per Ivan Posylnyi, when it comes to education, around half of Ukrainian children who joined schools in countries of relocation, kept ties with the Ukrainian schools online. During the lecture, this duality of school education for many children from Ukraine was one of the focal points of the audience's interest. “On the one hand, Ukrainian schools online (which became the normalcy for Ukrainian children back in the period of COVID-19 pandemic) played an important role of providing familiar cultural, linguistic, and educational contexts for children around Europe. On the other hand, children I spoke with around Poland, often claimed they don't have enough free time because of responsibilities in both Polish (offline) and Ukrainian (online) schools. This, together with so-called "preparatory classes" for Ukrainian children, deepened the problem of low social cohesion between Ukrainian and Polish children and adolescents. Spending most of their time in isolated preparatory classes or Ukrainian school online, children had neither enough time nor motivation to engage with the local community (e.g. classmates). Stereotypes which both Ukrainian and Polish children had about each other, also came to play quite often, as reported by children”, said Ivan Posylnyi.
The audience showed great interest in the lecture topics, which did not leave anyone indifferent. The quotes from interviews with adolescents attracted particular interest from the audience. In fact, acommontheme of Ivan’s talks with children was the longing for home in Ukraine. Below is an exchange between two teenage girls during one of the focus-group discussions in 2023:
S: “The best thing to do in Poland is to sleep. I always sleep.”
A: “And eat.”
S: “I always think, for the future, [that] I’ll go home, 100%. I’ll be back in the summer, why should I do anything here? Why should I start anything, why do I need this Polish language at all, why learn it? If I come home anyway. But I understand that I may not return. And maybe I’ll stay here. And I will sleep all day”. (You canread the full report via the link: https://www.unicef.org/)
As in the previous lecture of the series, students were very active during the Q&A session. After the lecture, they noted not only how interesting the topic and the research data were but also how the speaker presented the material. Ivan actively engaged the audience in dialogue, fostering space for an open discussion.
The discussion was masterfully moderated by Prof. Sören Brinkmann. The Zoom audience was also highly engaged in their questions and comments, just as at the previous events.
Here are some of Ivan’s impressions of the discussion: “The second part of my lecture was the time of Q&A. Below I would like to recall some key points made by me and the audience in the context of Ukrainian children's well-being:
- projective methods work best when speaking with children about their past experiences. One such effective method is the photovoice methodology, offering children to take photographs as answers to researchers' questions;
- children tend to be the subject of social research less often than adults, mostly due to a more complicated process of designing and executing such a research. However, children's voices are as important, and their experiences need rigorous social research;
- children and adolescents who come from the areas directly affected by the Russian war in Ukraine might be willing to share their difficult, sometimes traumatic experiences. Researchers need to be prepared for this and facilitate a discussion (in a group or individually) with this consideration”.
Here is the link to Ivan Posylnyi's publication to the other topic (about Donbas) that was mentioned during the lecture:
Posylnyi, Ivan (2023). The Soviet Pillar of Belonging: How Donbas Schools Construct the Reality in Occupation, Communist and Post-Communist Studies (2024) 57 (2): 112–134, https://doi.org/10.1525/cpcs.2023.2002005
This lecture was very insightful for the audience. Below, for example, are reviews shared by Erasmus students at the Willy Brandt Center from Germany and from Italy: “Overall, I really appreciated the insight into the work of Ukrainian researchers, and I was particularly impressed by the combination of scientific research findings and personal emotional insights. Personally, I enjoyed Ivan Posylnyi’s lecture the most because I found the method he presented very interesting, and I am deeply interested in work and research involving children”. (Antonia Francke, Erasmus student from Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Germany).
“It was very interesting for me to have the opportunity to meet a researcher that focused his studies on Ukrainian children with experience of forced displacement following the Russian war against Ukraine. …With great sensitivity Ivan Posylnyi delved into the world of children and managed to show us their side of the story, which is very much intertwined with the ordinary reality they breathe in and absorb every day. This last point was even more relevant to me, as I'm a student of Polish language and culture, and I was really curious to know more about the process of integration that Ukrainian refugees are (or aren't) going through right now in Poland. It was very stimulating to see how a proper sociological research can look like and it really inspired me for my future studies.” (Gaia Sinibaldi, Erasmus student from University of Padova, Italy).
Prof. Ekaterina Bataeva (Ukraine, Open International University of Human Development "Ukraine"), who joined the lecture via Zoom, also shared her reflections on the lecture: “It was interesting to get to know the pioneering methods of researching the problems of contemporary sociology of childhood, for example, the method of photovoice, which can be considered as a development of the Polish sociologist P. Sztompka's method of using photographs during interviews. I.Posylnyi's analysis of the differences in the perception of certain phenomena (for example, the issue of refugees) by children and adults, as well as their different behavior during sociological research was also remarkable. I think that I. Posylnyi's research will be of interest to many sociologists working in the field of sociology of education and sociology of childhood”.
Dr. Julia Kobzar (Freie Universität Berlin, ZDS Peking) also noted the importance of the topic raised. After the lecture, we also discussed with Julia Kobzar, the representative of our partner institution, the advisability of jointly organizing a lecture on these important issues in Berlin. This lecture for researchers, doctoral students and students at the ZDS Peking at the Free University of Berlin will contribute to the development of networking between the ZDS Peking and Willy Brand Center as DAAD-Centers for German and European Studies.
The Report was prepared by the scientific coordinator of the project Prof. Oksana Danylenko in coauthorship with doctoral researcher Ivan Posylnyi
