INSTITUTIONAL DETERMINANTS OF MIGRATION INTENTIONS: SYSTEMATIZATION OF APPROACHES AND THE LIMITS OF THEIR APPLICATION
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.32782/2786-8273/2026-14-2Keywords:
migration intentions, institutional trust, corruption, governance quality, forced migration, refugee return, European integrationAbstract
Introduction. The full-scale war has made Ukraine the source of Europe's largest forced displacement since World War II, with about 5.6 million refugees abroad and a declining share intending to return. The classical framework of economic differentials and security threats proves insufficient: many migration decisions are driven by disillusionment with domestic institutions – corruption, distrust of courts, perceived arbitrariness – and by idealized images of the EU as a space of predictable rules. Purpose. To systematize approaches to the institutional determinants of migration intentions, develop an original three-level classification, identify the limits of existing models under armed conflict and formulate research questions for further empirical study. Methods. An analytical literature review: critical synthesis of peer-reviewed publications and working papers of 2016–2026, classical theories as a conceptual frame and survey data on Ukraine, using comparative analysis, typology construction and validity assessment. Results. The literature establishes a distinct institutional channel: governance quality, corruption and institutional trust affect intentions even after controlling for income. The classification distinguishes the macro-institutional level (formal rules measured by composite indices), the organizational level (experience of interaction with specific state bodies) and the perceptual level (generalized trust, expectations, images of "better states"). Ukrainian wartime evidence shows the channel's ambivalence: perceived corruption and distrust of the judiciary deter return, while the surge of trust in the state strengthens it; near-absolute trust in the armed forces alongside deep distrust of courts shows that aggregated indices mask the organizational structure of trust. No major Ukrainian monitoring dataset treats institutional trust as an explanatory variable. Conclusion. The institutional channel is real but secondary to security and family drivers; intentions are valid yet volatile predictors of behavior. Anti-corruption and judicial reform, together with EU accession as a functional substitute for emigration, are key instruments of return policy. Five research questions are formulated.
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