“When the borders open, I’ll pack my husband’s suitcase and send him to work. How else can we feed the family?” asks Maryna, who lives in Mizhhirya, a mountain village in Zakarpattia.
This western region of Ukraine borders four EU member states, and for its residents labour migration is often the only way to survive. Maryna, 18, and her husband are trying to raise their one-year-old son on a meagre salary - a hard enough task without the instability of a global pandemic.
COVID-19 has brought life to a standstill in Ukraine, presenting many labour migrants like Maryna’s husband Mykola with an impossible choice: stay overseas and work in dangerous conditions; lose their job and sit out quarantine, unemployed, in a foreign country; or return home where no work awaits them.
