Editorial

Abstract

We write this editorial in mid-February 2023 as the first anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine fast approaches. The war has so far led to over eight million people fleeing Ukraine to seek refuge across neighboring countries, 1 an unprecedented situation in Europe since the end of WWII. While the hospitality and solidarity extended to Ukrainian refugees was widely commended from the onset, commentators, including the UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, Tendayi Achiume, have widely denounced and critiqued the racist and orientalist double standards and “racial tiering” inherent in popular and political responses to displacement from Ukraine (OHCHR 2022; Bayoumi 2022; Jackson Sow 2022; Ray 2022). Ukrainian refugees were welcomed with open borders and “open arms” while racialized third nationals fleeing from the same conflict, including 76,000 students from diverse African countries studying in Ukraine, were forcibly prevented from crossing the same borders, as an extension of institutionalized discriminatory policies which continue to frame migrants and refugees from Africa and the Middle East through the lens of hostility and suspicion (Zaru 2022; Banerjee 2023). Indeed, while Ukrainians have been welcomed across Europe, often explicitly because they have been racialized as white and Christian, people fleeing other conflicts, including wars in which European governments have played an active part, notably Afghanistan, have been met with soldiers and push-backs, in violation of international and regional rights frameworks, including the European Convention on Human Rights, in some cases at the very same borders, notably those of Poland, Latvia, and Lithuania (see Sanderson 2022).