For the last 30 years, Ukraine, as well as other former communist countries, has been adapting to the reduction of state involvement in sustaining social infrastructure. Additionally, the population ageing and youth outmigration were leading to a strain on existing care networks. Similarly to other countries, austerity cuts that affect senior citizens nudge restructuring of the ways in which society sustains itself. In Ukraine, this shift has an additional layer powered by the full-scale Russian invasion, creating a huge sense of uncertainty towards the future perspectives. Drawing on Social Reproduction Theory (Fraser, 2016; Vogel, 2017), I ask what are the care practices performed by senior citizens outside of kin relations and how do they sustain life in small-scale settlements? Despite the omnipresent uncertainty, routine practices of caring and receiving care remain. Although there is a push mediated by state into framing care as a family responsibility or a service that only some can allow (Dutchak, 2024), sustaining vulnerable groups requires care networks to go beyond the family and state. I explore care practices and its networks in a context, where state and kinship relations prove insufficient as the only means of support. The practice of care is based on unspoken, almost automatic routines, which are hard to grasp from quantitative data. Understood as natural, female care is often conceptualized as an affection, an action innate to women. To show how the overlap of socioeconomic hardship interacts with the challenge of population ageing, I engage with care practices performed by women over 60 years old. Through sociological analysis, I aim to show how older women contribute to society´s sustainment through care towards non-kin people. A focus on older female care practices reveal how female senior citizens build and sustain ties. Performing care becomes especially crucial due to the lack of optional infrastructures that could help older women navigate through numerous hardships of ageing under the war in a region bordering Russia. This presentation uncovers the continuities of care practices performed by older women in Nizhyn, town in the north of Ukraine. Based on five-month fieldwork in 2025-2026, I explore care practices and their networks in relation to the Russo-Ukrainian war and contextual regional dynamics. I will share observations on the variety of care practices, revealing patterns through which small-town society is sustained. This research adds to the discussion on resilience and inequality during the war-induced hardships, aiming to open up a dialogue on care practices and their networks within uncertain times.

The full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine has triggered unprecedented displacement, profoundly reshaping family structures and caregiving arrangements under conditions of prolonged uncertainty. Martial law, which restricts most men from leaving the country, has forcibly separated families across borders, giving rise to transnational caregiving, economic dependencies, reconfigured gender roles, and ongoing uncertainty surrounding care, mobility, and family reunification. Women with children constitute the majority of displaced persons and must navigate host-country regimes that combine temporary protection with significant restrictions on mobility and employment (UNHCR, 2024). While these policies ensure immediate safety, they institutionalise uncertainty by limiting displaced women’s capacity for long-term planning, economic autonomy, and transnational mobility. In this contribution, we examine how displaced Ukrainian families sustain relationships and caregiving through everyday transnational practices, including digital communication, reverse remittances, and renegotiated care responsibilities. We critically assess the ways in which forced migration policies shape family cohesion and gendered labour in wartime contexts. Our study draws on semi-structured interviews and autoethnography to explore the lived experiences of displaced Ukrainian women and their families. Autoethnography offers an insider perspective on how everyday uncertainty is experienced, managed, and normalised within transnational family life, allowing us to analyse how family ties influence migration aspirations and economic decision-making. Focusing primarily on Czechia, Poland, Italy, and Germany, we demonstrate that temporary protection regimes, while formally inclusive, often reproduce conditions of instability. In Germany, displaced Ukrainian women follow divergent trajectories: those dependent on social benefits face constrained mobility due to mandatory language courses and uninterrupted schooling obligations for children, whereas women entering paid employment-particularly in education, gain greater financial independence, potentially reshaping family power relations (Byelikova, 2024). In contrast, women in Poland and Czechia frequently remain reliant on remittances from spouses, including those serving in the Ukrainian Armed Forces, reinforcing gendered vulnerability and economic uncertainty. By situating these experiences within broader debates on transnational migration and wartime displacement, we contribute to discussions on the intersections of legal constraints, gendered mobility, and migration aspirations. Our findings highlight the need for policies that go beyond temporary protection to support long-term stability and family sustainability in forced displacement contexts.

The full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine has triggered unprecedented displacement, profoundly reshaping family structures and caregiving arrangements under conditions of prolonged uncertainty. Martial law, which restricts most men from leaving the country, has forcibly separated families across borders, giving rise to transnational caregiving, economic dependencies, reconfigured gender roles, and ongoing uncertainty surrounding care, mobility, and family reunification. Women with children constitute the majority of displaced persons and must navigate host-country regimes that combine temporary protection with significant restrictions on mobility and employment (UNHCR, 2024). While these policies ensure immediate safety, they institutionalise uncertainty by limiting displaced women’s capacity for long-term planning, economic autonomy, and transnational mobility. In this contribution, we examine how displaced Ukrainian families sustain relationships and caregiving through everyday transnational practices, including digital communication, reverse remittances, and renegotiated care responsibilities. We critically assess the ways in which forced migration policies shape family cohesion and gendered labour in wartime contexts. Our study draws on semi-structured interviews and autoethnography to explore the lived experiences of displaced Ukrainian women and their families. Autoethnography offers an insider perspective on how everyday uncertainty is experienced, managed, and normalised within transnational family life, allowing us to analyse how family ties influence migration aspirations and economic decision-making. Focusing primarily on Czechia, Poland, Italy, and Germany, we demonstrate that temporary protection regimes, while formally inclusive, often reproduce conditions of instability. In Germany, displaced Ukrainian women follow divergent trajectories: those dependent on social benefits face constrained mobility due to mandatory language courses and uninterrupted schooling obligations for children, whereas women entering paid employment-particularly in education, gain greater financial independence, potentially reshaping family power relations (Byelikova, 2024). In contrast, women in Poland and Czechia frequently remain reliant on remittances from spouses, including those serving in the Ukrainian Armed Forces, reinforcing gendered vulnerability and economic uncertainty. By situating these experiences within broader debates on transnational migration and wartime displacement, we contribute to discussions on the intersections of legal constraints, gendered mobility, and migration aspirations. Our findings highlight the need for policies that go beyond temporary protection to support long-term stability and family sustainability in forced displacement contexts.

Since 2014, and especially following the large-scale escalation in 2022, the armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine has profoundly reshaped everyday life across the region. Beyond its military dimension, the war has produced sustained border closures, mass forced displacement, and prolonged institutional instability, resulting in a growing number of Ukrainian and mixed Ukrainian-Russian families being separated across frontlines, internal territorial divisions, and international borders. This paper conceptualizes family separation and reunion not only as a humanitarian problem but as a form of cumulative everyday uncertainty that generates long-term social, economic, and security vulnerabilities. Drawing on 101 in-depth semi-structured interviews conducted in Ukraine, in the temporarily occupied territories, in Russia, and in several European countries, the study examines how people maintain family ties and pursue reunification under conditions of legal ambiguity, restricted mobility, and fragmented governance. The analysis identifies a constellation of interrelated barriers: complex and opaque administrative procedures, limited usability or recognition of personal documents, mobility restrictions, unstable access to communication technologies, economic pressure, emotional exhaustion, and social isolation. Rather than operating independently, these constraints reinforce one another, producing cumulative effects in which each new obstacle becomes harder to overcome precisely because of previously accumulated limitations. The paper argues that this accumulation of barriers transforms uncertainty from a temporary crisis condition into a persistent social reality that reshapes trust in institutions, future planning, and perceptions of personal security. Family separation thus emerges as a structural dimension of protracted conflict, linking micro-level experiences of uncertainty with macro-level institutional fragmentation and geopolitical closure. By foregrounding lived experiences across multiple jurisdictions, the study contributes empirical insight into how ordinary actors navigate overlapping regimes of control, documentation, and risk. Analytically, the paper proposes a framework of cumulative vulnerability that helps explain why standard humanitarian and administrative interventions often fail to restore predictability or mobility in prolonged conflict settings. The findings also speak to broader debates on human security, governance under uncertainty, and the social consequences of durable border regimes. While grounded in the Russia–Ukraine context, the analysis offers comparative relevance for other regions experiencing protracted displacement and institutional instability.