New mobilities, old vulnerabilities: European Far East and coloniality of Ukrainian gendered labor

The paper explores how the legal inclusion of Ukrainian citizens in the German labor market under the Temporary Protection Directive intertwines with their position of being marked by colonial differences. By introducing the concept of European Far East, we strive to grasp analytically the specific position of Ukraine within global racial capitalism. Drawing on the original empirical data and ongoing public debates, we unpack this particular position to demonstrate how, despite the special protection status granted by the EU, refugees from Ukraine become subject to the ‘migration industry’ and are often confined to the niche of low-skilled, low-paid labor. This perspective also allows us to see how the critical discourse of ‘VIP refugees’ is, a matter of fact, aimed not at dismantling the racializing structures of the migration industry and enabling a more universally shared European future, but at precarious war refugees from Ukraine, thus strengthening the racializing structures. Finally, this analytics reveals how, in the context of the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Far Eastern Europeans’ lives appear ‘cheap’ enough to be sacrificed for the sake of peace in the Western world.