The Kyiv International Institute of Sociology notes a multiple drop in the share of those wishing to leave for permanent residence in the United States or EU countries in the event of obtaining citizenship of these countries from the fall of 2020.
“In October 2020, KIIS conducted an all-Ukrainian telephone survey, which, among other things, posed the question “And if you were now granted US or EU citizenship without conditions, would you go to these countries for permanent residence?” At that time, 28% of all adults of Ukrainians were ready to go abroad.In September 2022, we asked this question again… 91% became more of those who would not want to leave,” the press release on the results of the study says.
At the same time, KIIS notes that currently about 10% of adult Ukrainians are now abroad as refugees. “However, even if half of them would answer yes to this question (recent surveys of Ukrainian refugees show that in fact the majority still want to return home, that is, the answers “yes” would most likely be less than half), then the decline in emigration sentiment would also be significant, from 28% to around 13%.
According to the results of the study, in all regions of Ukraine, the absolute majority of the population (90-92%) would not want to travel abroad.
In terms of age, younger respondents are more willing to emigrate, but in fact, among all ages, the vast majority (at least 84%) would not want to go to live in the US/EU. “In 2020, almost half (46%) of young people under 30 would like to leave, now it is 13%,” the KIIS stressed.
The survey was conducted on September 7-13 by the method of telephone interviews using a computer (CATI) among 2,000 respondents from all regions of Ukraine, controlled before February 24, and did not cover citizens who left abroad. The statistical sampling error under normal circumstances (with a probability of 0.95 and taking into account the design effect of 1.1) did not exceed 2.4% for indicators close to 50% and 1.1% for indicators close to 5%. In war conditions, a certain systematic deviation is added to the error, but the results obtained still retain high representativeness, the KIIS notes.
