ISSN 2300-1682

Central and Eastern European Migration Review

Special Section

Olga Oleinikova
Keywords: Ukraine, daspora
Abstract  

The collection of papers in this section aims to overcome the territorial bias that shapes democratic thinking and underpins diaspora scholarship (particularly diaspora engagement with democratic processes and its potential and contribution to democratic change) and to propose a deterritorial vision of both these elements. Having the Ukrainian case study at its centre, this section asks how the modern perspective of dispersal offers a useful way to conceptualise diaspora, while examining how the modern diaspora activity enables diasporas to influence the processes of democratisation and high skilled migrants to impact democratic processes in their homeland. In this section we seek to probe how various actors and groups, located across territorial space, can affect political systems and, more specifically, influence democratic processes. In that sense, this section is driven by a post-territorial vision of politics and democratisation processes that privilege networks of affiliation and organising, rather than geographically-bound political movements. It focuses on the nexus between one form of displacement, diaspora, and a particular political system, democracy, to provide insights into how the former might impact democratic processes. Specifically, this section explores that nexus principally in relation to the role of the multifaceted Ukrainian diaspora and their efforts to get involved in the democratic processes and democracy building in contemporary Ukraine.
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Foteini Kalantzi, Iryna Lapshyna
Keywords: diaspora, diasporic engagement, homeland, Greece, Ukraine, crisis
Abstract  

This article focuses on the interrelationship between homeland and diaspora at times of crisis. It adopts a comparative lens to look into diasporic (dis)engagement with the homeland, specifically analysing the cases of Greece and Ukraine. The main research issues are how crises affect the engagement between homeland and diaspora – taking Greece and Ukraine as case studies – and which the defining contextual factors are that transform the diaspora engagement. The article unpacks the homeland–diaspora nexus concerning two states with different socio-political backgrounds, both going through severe political and economic crises. In so doing, the article gives prominence to the differentiation between the engagement of the two different diasporas with their home countries at times of crisis. Evidence suggests substantial engagement in the Ukrainian case while, in the Greek case, a more mixed attitude – leaning towards disengagement – is apparent.

 
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Klavdia Tatar
Keywords: Ukrainian diaspora in Canada, EuroMaidan, Russian invasion, lobbying, homeland conflict, Revolution of Dignity
Abstract  

This paper analyses diaspora advocacy on behalf of Ukraine as practiced by a particular diaspora group, Ukrainian Canadians, in a period of high volatility in Ukraine: from the EuroMaidan protests to the Russian invasion of Eastern Ukraine. This article seeks to add to the debate on how conflict in the homeland affects a diaspora’s mobilisation and advocacy patterns. I argue that the Maidan and the war played an important role not only in mobilising and uniting disparate diaspora communities in Canada but also in producing new advocacy strategies and increasing the diaspora’s political visibility. The paper begins by mapping out the diaspora players engaged in pro-Ukraine advocacy in Canada. It is followed by an analysis of the diaspora’s patterns of mobilisation and a discussion of actual advocacy outcomes. The second part of the paper investigates successes in the diaspora’s post-Maidan communication strategies. Evidence indicates that the diaspora’s advocacy from Canada not only brought much-needed assistance to Ukraine but also contributed to strengthening its own image as an influential player. Finally, the paper suggests that political events in the homeland can serve as a mobilising factor but produce effective advocacy only when a diaspora has already achieved a high level of organisational capacity and created well-established channels via which to lobby for homeland interests.
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Articles

Olga Oleinikova
Keywords: skilled migrants, post-independence Ukrainian migration, Australia, achievement life strategy, IT professionals
Abstract  

Based on 25 interviews with high-skilled migrants, this article examines the migration of IT professionals from Ukraine in Australia. Their migration experience – identified as ‘migration for achievement’ – is examined in three ways. First, the article sets out the structural context for migration and the formation of the achievement life strategy: (1) the emergence and growth of the IT industry in Ukraine, in combination with (2) shifts in Australian migration policy triggered by the growth of the innovation economy and demand for highly skilled migrants. Second, it examines migration decision-making and the individual motivations, values, aims and agency of migrants. Third, the article explores how achievement life strategies are recreated or transformed after migration by looking into the migrants’ adaptation, occupational outcomes, language and national identity, future plans and aspirations. The narratives of the ‘achievement migrants’ in Australia form a story of well-integrated members of Australian society and active agents of social and economic life. Given their capacity to successfully maintain their social and economic status after migration, along with their positive contributions to Australian society in terms of social cohesion, innovation and economic production, this group can be considered a ‘brain-gain’ for Australia.

 
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Anna Przybyszewska
Keywords: habitus mismatch, suffering, stigmatised identity, downward professional mobility, class mobility
Abstract  

Recent research has reported that an increasing number of migrants in Norway are concentrated in the low-skilled sectors of the labour market, irrespective of their educational background, thus facilitating the formation of migrant niches in the long term. Despite the growing body of literature that raises the problem of downward professional mobility and deskilling among migrant populations, little scholarly attention has been paid to migrants’ struggles and vulnerabilities as a result of underemployment. Drawing on 30 in-depth interviews, this article explores the common experience of habitus mismatch and suffering among Poles who have worked below their level of competence or professional experience since migrating to Norway. By analysing subjective experiences of downward professional and social mobility and the conflict between valued and stigmatised identities, the article examines the various habitus mismatches that contribute to suffering in downwardly mobile Polish migrants.

 
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Kamila Fiałkowska
Keywords: gender, intersectionality, masculinity, nation, Polish migration, religion
Abstract  

To date, the literature on gender and migration continues a longstanding bias towards female over male experiences. Similarly, research on Polish post-EU accession emigration has not sufficiently addressed the male experiences of migration. Drawing on 20 interviews with migrant men, this paper contributes to the existing research on the variety of masculinity practices and gendered migration from the Central and Eastern Europe. In so doing, it focuses on the relationship between masculinity, religion and migration in the context of migration from Poland to the UK. While religion is also rarely addressed in discussions on the post-EU accession migration of Poles, it proves to be important in shaping world views and influencing migrants’ positionalities in the new social context. Indeed, in migrants’ narratives, gender, religion and the nation intertwine with one another. Analysis shows how certain aspects of men’s social identities that were originally assets turn into burdens and how the men reach to religion, while distance from the institutional Church, to renegotiate their new positionality in order to avoid denigration or to support social recognition – which is especially important in the social reality shaped by Brexit.
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Ewa Nowicka
Keywords: Kazakhstan, homecoming, repatriation, return migration, adaptation
Abstract  

This article is devoted to contemporary return migrations by Kazakhs – a process of great significance for the population and cultural policies of the government of independent Kazakhstan. I examine the repatriation process of the Kazakh population from the point of view of the cultural transformations of Kazakh society itself, unveiling the intended and unintended effects of these return migrations. The case of the Kazakh returns is a historically unique phenomenon, yet it provides data permitting the formulation of broader generalisations. It illustrates the dual impact of culturally different environments, which leads to a simultaneous preserving and changing of the culture of the new immigrants. The analyses found in this article are based upon data collected during two periods of fieldwork conducted in June–July 2016 and March 2018 at several locations in Kazakhstan and in cooperation with a Kazakh university. The research methodology is anchored in multi-sited, multi-year fieldwork.
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Special Series

Hanna Vakhitova, Agnieszka Fihel
Keywords: Central and Eastern Europe, international migration, migration transition, quantitative data, Ukraine
Abstract  

Ukraine remains today one of the main migrant sending countries in Europe, with thousands of Ukrainians working in Czechia, Italy, Poland and Russia. In this regard, Ukraine shares the previous experience of Central European countries such as the Baltic States, Poland and Slovakia, that in the 1990s and early 2000s registered first temporary, and later permanent, outflows. In more recent years, however, many Central and Eastern European countries started to register increasing numbers of immigrants and some of them have switched from net sending to net receiving migration regimes. The objective of this article is to discuss the possibility of a similar turnaround in Ukraine; to this end, we investigate the main quantitative data on migration from and to Ukraine, and interpret this information in the light of selected theoretical approaches that have been used to explain migration in Central and Eastern Europe. The available data reveal high levels of labour emigration of both temporary and permanent character, the increasing propensity of migrants to settle down in the host countries, and the growing involvement of the youngest cohorts in the emigration. Despite this evidence we argue that the current situation by no means constitutes a premise for reversing the outflow from Ukraine. We conclude that the most recent improvements in general economic indicators will not lead to high levels of immigration without an active labour market policy towards foreigners.
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