Constructing Refugee Identity: A Heuristic Inquiry into Experiences of Ukrainian Refugees

Besides the despicable atrocities and devastation, Russia’s war in Ukraine caused the emergence of a group of refugees previously unknown in the U.S. and the world. The phenomenon of “Ukrainian refugees” is new to the immigration and resettlement agencies, host communities, employers, and educators. This research explores how five Ukrainians who left their homeland after the beginning of Russia’s war construct their refugee identity in the United States. Furthermore, this study aims to discover in what ways learning English in the English Language Learning (ELL) program at a community college in Nebraska influences refugee identity construction in resettlement. This study utilizes a heuristic inquiry approach due to its relational nature and the researcher’s closeness to the topic of inquiry. My intimate connection to the events in Ukraine and continuous relationship with the participants, created a favorable environment to study the essence of Ukrainian refugee experiences heuristically. I conducted conversational interviews with the participants in their native Ukrainian language with the goal of collecting the deepest and most meaningful explications of the experiences without the constraints of the language barrier. I translated the interviews into English and then performed their thematic analysis. Three major aspects of the participants' lives influence the construction of refugee identity the most—faith, work, and English language acquisition. I found that the participants’ faith which was prominent before the exile, strengthened through belonging to church, religious community, and relationship with God. Work was ingrained in their world in the United States and their future was believed to depend on good employment opportunities. At the time of the interviews, the participants were actively discovering their professional identities. Lastly, fluency in English meant the ability to thrive and succeed in this new country they started to call home.