The thesis presents the results of a theoretical and empirical research on personal future constructing strategies of internally displaced persons. The relevance of the research was based on the significant increase in forced migration within the country as a result of the war started by the Russian Federation back in 2014. Traumatic experiences related to pre-resettlement events and difficulties of adaptation in the place of life, which cover different spheres of IDPs' lives, affect not only adaptation to new conditions, but also the resettlers’ desire and ability to construct their own future.
Forced relocation and the psychological, social and material difficulties associated with it affect the individual's perception of the time and the balance of past, present and future as its structural components. A person affected by traumatic events has a specific subjective assessment of the periods of life before and after the trauma. These periods have a different emotional coloring and event intensity. The period before the traumatic event is retrospective and refers to the past, but in addition to the events of the past and the casual life, this period contains plans, goals and dreams for the future that were suddenly broken off and became unrealizable. Negative experience of constructing the future affects the general attitude towards the future, it can become the cause of its avoidance. Also, the experience of traumatic events changes the individual's beliefs about the controllability of events and the role of fate in their course. Beliefs formed under the influence of negative circumstances can prevent an individual from constructing personal future, limiting individual’s activity in this process. Identifying IDPs’ future constructing strategies, their content and application features, contributes to a deeper understanding of IDPs' attitude to the future and its prospects, building a future life not just according to new conditions, but also taking into account new opportunities received after resettlement.
The scientific novelty of the obtained results.
For the first time:
- the retrospective future as a peculiarity of IDPs’ future constructing is presented;
- the strategic approach to the research of the IDP’s personal future constructing is proposed. The strategies combine all the means and methods of constructing a personal future in the most comprehensive and systematical way. At the same time, strategies emphasize the need for continuous analysis and transformation of these means in accordance with intrapersonal changes and the influence of the environment;
- strategies for constructing the personal future were defined, among them: the strategy of planning the personal future, the strategy of avoiding the future, the strategy of establishing the future in the present, the strategy of individual or social construction of the future, the strategy of adapting to circumstances, the strategy of constructing the future by example;
- the common and different in the use of personal future constructing strategies and in vision of the future, temporally and meaningfully filling of the future motivational objects of IDPs and persons who have no experience of forced displacement is determined;
- emotionally colored themes related to the war in the narratives and motivational objects of IDPs’ future, such as relationships with relatives and friends, new homes, the past, the war and occupation of the respondents' hometowns, returning home after the war, the desire to meet ones who stayed in the occupied territories, desire for Ukraine's victory in the war, were revealed.
There are clarified:
- the definition of personal future construction as a process of individual’s conscious, organized and complex creation of his or her future according to the existing image of the future, which is based on the individual characteristics of the personality, previous experience and the influence of social circumstances;
- the role of traumatic events in a person's perception of life time;
- psychological characteristics of internally displaced persons in the context of time periods of life;
- understanding of the correlations of basic beliefs, attitudes to uncertainty and time perspectives;
- - differences in the time perspectives of IDPs and persons who have no experience of forced resettlement.
