Jacek Kotus

Abstract

The article addresses the issue of Ukrainian war refugees in Poland. The authors aim to reconstruct the role that various places play in the everyday life of refugees in Poland and the differences between recognized places. In this way, the authors try to answer the question about the meaning of place in life as refugee persons during the first weeks and the following months of their stay in host country. The research used a mixed method approach: general questionnaire survey and in-depth interviews. The particular findings of the studyare related to the observations that: a) the spaces/places in the first days and weeks of war refugees' stay inthe host country are completely generic, b) during their stay in the following months, refugees look for places to redefine their situation. The main conclusion of the research is that places have a very great, perhaps underestimated, importance during the stay of war refugees in the host country.

Keywords: war refugees, Ukrainians, sense of place, places as gaps, places of redefinition

Jacek Kotus [tatra@amu.edu.pl], Critical Geography Lab, Faculty of Human Geography and Planning, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań Krygowskiego 10, 61-680 Poznań: Poland
Paul C. Adams [paul.adams@austin.utexas.edu], Department of Geography and The Environment University of Texas at Austin, TX, US Liberal Arts Building, TX 78712m 305 E 23rd St, Austin: US