How Do Immigrants Understand Adaptation? A Longitudinal Study of Displaced Ukrainians in Berlin, Budapest, and Warsaw

Policy makers and public opinion often expect immigrants to “adapt” rapidly to the receiving society. This notion of adaptation is usually framed in terms of labour market integration, but also extends to social (building networks) and cultural (endorsing norms and values) dimensions. Integration research has largely been driven by these host-society expectations, focusing on immigrant–native gaps along such dimensions. Much less is known, however, about how immigrants themselves define and evaluate what it means to be “adapted.” Do immigrants share the mainstream understanding of adaptation promoted in the receiving society? To what extent do national contexts shape these perceptions? Are there cross-country similarities in immigrants’ understandings of adaptation? And do perceptions change over the life course or with increasing experience in the host country? These are the questions this study addresses. The analysis draws on yearly repeated semi-structured interviews with 78 displaced Ukrainians who fled to Berlin, Budapest, and Warsaw in 2022. Since spring 2023, these respondents have been asked annually whether they feel they have adapted to their destination country, resulting in three consecutive interviews per participant across a three-year period. This longitudinal and comparative design allows me to explore both individual trajectories of adaptation and the influence of distinct national contexts. Employing an abductive analytical approach, I examine how respondents’ understanding of adaptation and their self-assessed levels of adaptation evolve over time and differ across Berlin, Budapest, and Warsaw.