Vulnerability Profiles among Ukrainian Returnees: A Latent Class Analysis of Household and Contextual Constraints

The massive forced displacement resulting from the full-scale conflict in Ukraine was accompanied by significant return flows, which were also marked by an environment of insecurity as well as economic instability. Therefore, it is important to understand that not all returns were accompanied by socioeconomic recovery; rather, returnees also faced various structural challenges that were determined by their household composition as well as differences in living conditions in the post-conflict environment. This article seeks to explore the socioeconomic vulnerability of returnees in Ukraine based on a survey conducted by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in August 2024, targeting 1,435 respondents who were displaced.

The concept of vulnerability in this article was based on the International Organization for Migration’s Determinants of Migrant Vulnerability approach, which indicates that vulnerability was determined by multiple factors that interact at different levels: the individual, household, community, and structural levels. Indicators of vulnerability were recoded to reflect binary outcomes of cumulative vulnerability conditions of dependency burden, presence of older persons in the household, experience of household separation, economic inactivity, and deterioration in safety, services, and institutional support.

To examine the unobserved typologies of vulnerability, a latent class analysis was used. The results revealed four distinct classes, distinguishing between older-person households with high inactivity and severe deprivation, and dependent households with varying degrees of contextual hardship. The two classes were primarily driven by demographic vulnerability and withdrawal from the labor market, while the others were driven by dependency-related disadvantage and varying degrees of pronounced disruption in basic services and livelihood opportunities

The current study makes a significant contribution to the displacement return literature by providing an empirically grounded typology of vulnerability in the Ukrainian returnee population, thus underscoring the importance of differentiated returnee and social protection strategies, particularly for the most structurally disadvantaged groups.