Migration aspirations: fallible impact of structural factors and incongruence of aspirations claimed by Ukrainian students at the Czech Republic

Abstract

Traditional approaches in migration studies are push and pull factors, neoclassical theory of migration and historical-structural approaches, however these approaches are not human-centered because self-identification, self-realization, aspirations or desires of migrants is not adopted. This article, based on qualitative research in the Czech Republic and Ukraine from 2014 until 2022, is aimed at young Ukrainian participants who throughout eight years migrated in their 15-16-years-old as students at High school in Uničov, Czech Republic, while their parents stayed in Ukraine. This article shows that aspirations, instead of objective structural factors, are more decisive for participants and it indicates that migration aspirations are strongly ambiguous and heavily affected by strong inclination to subjective goals which asses the incongruence between participants and their parents in this research.