The lived experiences of British citizens hosting Ukrainian refugees in the East of England

Context: The Homes for Ukraine (HfU) scheme, launched in March 2022 in response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, represented an exceptional mobilisation of British citizens as direct providers of humanitarian shelter. Despite the scale of this response, the psychological experience of hosting remained underexplored. Aim: This study explored the lived experience of British citizens who hosted Ukrainian refugees under the HfU scheme, with particular attention to the psychological processes and meaning-making dimensions of the experience as it unfolded within the intimate space of home. Method: Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was conducted with 15 British citizens who hosted Ukrainian refugees through the HfU scheme in the East of England, using semi-structured interviews conducted, where possible, within participant’s own homes. Results: Three group experiential themes were identified: Seeing Self in the Space of Conflict, capturing the psychological processes through which witnessing the crisis moved participants to act, and the ways in which the encounter with guests both exposed and transformed their sense of self; The Shared Soundscape of Home, exploring the lived texture of home as a shared sensory space and the quiet negotiation of domestic life; and Being Held in Suspense, examining the liminality of hosting and the significance of community scaffolding. Discussion: The findings are interpreted as a nested ontological condition operating at two levels. At the domestic level, the host’s home became a scaffold for reconstructing the guest’s destroyed ontological security. At the community level, peer networks provided collective containment, performing for hosts what hosts performed for guests. Reconstruction was required at both levels. Implications: To the researcher’s knowledge, this study offers the first IPA of the lived psychological experience of HfU hosts, with implications for clinical practice with host populations, the design of future sponsorship schemes, and clinical psychology’s role in relation to the governance of forced migration.