Katalin Pallay - Valéria Markos - Hajnalka Fényes
Abstract
During the Russian-Ukrainian war of 2022, an important role will be assigned to the Transcarpathian youth who volunteer in Transcarpathia to help refugees on the Hungarian-Ukrainian border and in Hungary. As a result of the Orange Revolution and the series of demonstrations on Majdan Square, the civil activity of the Ukrainian population increased significantly, and the minority position of Hungarians living in Transcarpathia also strengthened civil participation after the turn of the millennium. The target group of our research is justified by the fact that young people are the largest group of volunteers in Ukraine. In our exploratory research, we conducted semi-structured interviews with young volunteers from Transcarpathia, and we investigated their volunteer-experiences before the war, the characteristics of their volunteer-activities during the war, their motivation for the volunteer activity, and the possible positive outcome of their activities. In addition to the theme-analysis along the interviews, we also prepared a type-analysis, and we differentiated between three volunteer-types (regular volunteers with altruistic motivations, regular volunteers with mixed motivations, and occasional volunteers with mixed motivations). The most important result of our research is that, young volunteers from Transcarpathia are characterized by strong solidarity for the Ukrainian refugees despite the social tension arising as a result of the war. Another important finding may be that the group of respondents who only started to volunteer during the war might be open to help others also in the future, and as a result, the culture of volunteering may spread even more in the examined area.
Keywords: young people, volunteering, the 2022 Russian-Ukrainian war, helping refugees, motivations for volunteering,