Bordering and repatriation : displaced unaccompanied children from the Polish-Ukrainian borderland after World War II

Abstract

After the end of World War II, the welfare workers of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) and, from 1947, the International Refugee Organization (IRO) took care of displaced children and helped them to return to their home countries. This paper explores how the post-war controversies between the Soviet and Anglo-American governments and (re)bordering of the Polish-Soviet borderland changed the welfare workers' approach to interpret belonging of unaccompanied displaced children of presumably Ukrainian origin. In the winter of 1945 the region of Eastern Poland was annexed by the Soviet Union. In the summer of 1945, British and American officials declared that they refused to recognize the acquisition of these territories by the Soviet Union. In result, the repatriation of unaccompanied Ukrainian children who originally came from this borderland became the subjects of intense controversy between the former Allies. The welfare workers used the fact of these children's belonging to the Polish-Soviet borderland as an argument against their repatriation to the Soviet Union. By looking into the social dimension of bordering processes, this article suggests that the UNRRA's and IRO's social workers redefined the border between the two countries in their daily work.