New Homes for the Displaced: Negotiating Welfare and Citizenship in Light of Ukraine’s Housing Crisis

• Applicant: Dr. Sophie Schmäing
• Subject Area: Sociological Theory ; Empirical Social Research
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 561280629

This project analyses the social dynamics of homeownership amid external shocks, focusing on collective and individual responses to the massive housing crisis in Ukraine, caused by Russia’s large-scale war. Ukraine’s housing regime, established by post-socialist ‘give-away’ privatisation, has been characterised by an underlying tension between the state’s withdrawal from housing policies and continued societal expectations for state-provided homeownership. This housing regime has experienced a fundamental disruption by the destruction of housing stock and the occupation of Ukrainian cities by Russian forces. Displaced Ukrainians who have been dispossessed of their homes are hit hardest by this disruption. The search for accommodation in Ukraine or abroad is a pressing social issue that necessitates renegotiating the prevalent understandings of welfare and citizenship. Starting from the assumption that housing regimes shape and are shaped by social structures and meaning-making, this project develops a constructivist perspective of welfare provision and the norms of citizenship related to homeownership. It uses interpretive qualitative methods to analyse current Ukrainian negotiations about housing and compensation for destroyed and dispossessed property. The project comprises three complementary research foci: (1) The first part scrutinises the political-ideological ideas underpinning state housing policy and the related public discourse. It analyses how understandings of social and active citizenship inform the degree to which the state, homeowners, or other actors are considered responsible for housing issues.(2) The second part encompasses three case studies in Dnipro, Ivano-Frankivsk, and Vinnytsia, each focusing on specific housing projects for internally displaced persons (IDPs), initiated by civil society actors or IDPs themselves. These initiatives, which aim to provide alternatives to homeownership, are analysed as attempts to renegotiate welfare provisions from below.(3) The third part investigates views on Ukrainian housing policy among displaced Ukrainians in Germany and traces how they navigate the rental-dominated German housing market. This part is guided by how Ukrainians’ actual housing situation shapes their sense of citizenship.Considering the role of norms and practices of welfare and citizenship, the project contributes to a nuanced understanding of the constitutive role of homeownership in society. This study provides fresh insights into the political-ideological underpinnings of post-Soviet housing regimes. By studying displaced Ukrainians not as passive recipients of social benefits but as active participants in negotiations about housing, this project contributes to forced migration scholarship. Notably, the project enhances our understanding of the rationales shaping the agendas of the state, municipalities, and civil society regarding a critical social issue that will affect future societal cohesion in Ukraine.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants