Around a third of Ukraine refugees hope to return
Published: Monday, Dec 18th 2023, 08:40
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According to a survey, around a third of Ukrainians who have fled to Switzerland because of the Russian war of aggression hope to return to their home country. At 40%, the majority of refugees are undecided, as the analysis by the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), the State Secretariat for Migration (SEM) and Ipsos shows.
A further third of the Ukrainians surveyed in Switzerland stated in the survey that they did not want to return. According to the survey, the main obstacles to returning are security concerns and the Russian occupation of the area in which the refugees were living, the lack of access to functioning healthcare and the lack of work and livelihood opportunities.
21% of Ukrainian refugees were employed at the time of the survey. However, half of the employees stated that their current professional activity was at a lower level than their previous employment in Ukraine. Around a third of respondents were unemployed. A quarter stated that they were completing vocational training.
Language barrier
According to the respondents, the biggest obstacle to labor market integration is the required knowledge of the national language. This is followed by a lack of employment opportunities that match qualifications, insufficient training and inadequate recognition of qualifications.
Overall, 69% of Ukrainian refugees in Switzerland have a university degree. In turn, 79% are women and children - most of them arrived in Switzerland shortly after the large-scale Russian invasion between February and April 2022.
According to the authors, the analysis is based on 1125 surveys that were completed between March 30 and May 1, 2023 via an online questionnaire. The data was collected at household level.
According to the latest figures from the SEM, around 66,100 people from Ukraine with protection status S are still in Switzerland. More than 20,000 have left the country again.
©Keystone/SDA
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