The Crisis of Social Reproduction Provisioning: Gender, Class and Migration in Poland and Ukraine

This chapter examines the impact of the neoliberalisation of state policies on social reproduction provisioning in Poland and Ukraine and the gender and class implications of these processes. Through a transnational and genealogical perspective, it explores how periodic politico-economic shocks have provided policymakers with recurring opportunities to redesign the state’s regulatory and redistributive functions, contributing to the formation of a social reproduction crisis. The analysis reveals how both the progressive interconnection of Polish, Ukrainian, and EU political economies and the cumulative effect of their crisis-response policies, particularly labour market deregulation and public welfare restructuring, have intensified social reproduction pressures on households and communities. Confronting reduced resources needed for social reproduction, people adapted by engaging in more market-oriented behaviours and transnational labour migration. These societal adaptations have exacerbated gender and class fragmentations, thus rearticulating existing gender and class relations and shaping the ways in which necessities and opportunities have been navigated and struggled over.