On 24 February 2022, Russia started an invasion of Ukraine. Since then, many families—mostly women and children—have left the country to save their lives. Estonia hosts over 50,000 refugees of different ages, including children. Adapting to an unfamiliar environment is always stressful for people in one way or another, particularly when the reason for the forced move is as traumatic as war. The problems of integrating immigrants affect all the primary areas of a person’s life: emotional, cognitive, behavioural, motivational, and communicative. The appearance of school-age child refugees in schools in a host country poses serious challenges not only for the migrants but also for the locals, who in turn must adapt to the new situation. All war refugees have lived through traumatic events, but for children the impact is more profound. They are deprived of their friends and family members, a familiar environment, and even their language of communication. The authors discuss the experiences of Ukrainian refugee schoolchildren in Estonian basic schools and those of their Estonian peers in adapting to the new situation and bring the children’s voices and suggestions to the reader. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024.

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-61333-3_12
ISSN: 18795196