A framework for understanding precarious economic incorporation of Ukrainian refugees in Central Eastern Europe

Abstract This article introduces the MoPEI (Mechanisms of Precarious Economic Incorporation) framework, a conceptual-analytical tool for explaining how refugees are steered into precarious labor through the relational and layered intersections of multiple mechanisms. Considering the labor market realities of Central and Eastern Europe, MoPEI identifies six such mechanisms – structural constraints, temporal and legal ambiguity, migration infrastructures, semi-compliance, normative pressures, and bounded agency – and models their interplays using network analysis. We apply this framework to a case study of forcibly displaced Ukrainians in Czechia, where our evidence points to their substantial engagement in informal, semi-formal, and precarious economic activities alongside rapid labor market entry. Drawing on two waves of survey data (2022, 2023) and focus group discussions, our findings demonstrate how the MoPEI mechanisms interact to facilitate and institutionalize precarious incorporation, shaped by entrenched brokerage practices, weak protection, limited agency, and structural disadvantages. In doing so, MoPEI addresses the limits of fragmented and thematically specific explanations by offering a relational account of how precarious incorporation is co-produced.