Conflict reterritorialisation: Shifting group boundaries in the diaspora during the armed conflict in the ‘homeland’

ABSTRACT

Research on wars, including the ethnicised armed conflicts, has focused on the territorial dimension of war, and direct and indirect actors involved therein. This paper uses concepts of deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation to explore if the symbols, narratives, and attitudes of war in the ‘homeland’ can be embedded into the ethnic boundary-making processes and shift them according to the situation in the ‘homeland’ in the diasporic setting. I focus on the Ukrainian-Russian conflict, and interview Ukrainians and Russians from Ukraine living in Sweden. I find that attitudes toward the conflict can become intertwined with subjective ethnic identification of the Self and the Other, shifting ethnic boundary-making processes in alliance with the conflict ‘back home.’

KEYWORDS:

• Homeland
• deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation
• armed conflict
• diasporic
• Ukrainians and Russians
• ethnic boundary-making processes

Introduction

Traditional studies of war have primarily focused on the territorial dimensions of the tragic events it carries. The ethnicised war, or an armed conflict, which incorporates ideas, discourses, and narratives of ethnicity or ethnic belonging of certain territories, is usually understood in a similar fashion. For example, Brown (2010), in his analysis of ‘ethnic conflicts,’ names the size of the country, quantities of ‘ethnic’ groups, proximity between these groups, and their sizes as several factors that can be instrumental in potentiating such conflict, for example in the context of the lack of resources. Core ‘ethnic conflict’ scholars like Horowitz (2001) still usually build on the essentialist perspective on ethnicity as a fixed category. Conversely, Brubaker (2002) argues that the concept of ‘ethnic conflict’ itself conflates the cause and result of the studied phenomenon. Instead of understanding ethnic/racial hatred, violence, and xenophobia at large as a result of a certain conflict, most scholars tend to put historical ‘ethnic grievances’ at the centre of the causal argument. In agreement with this argument, I follow Brubaker (2002) in his suggestion to instead call wars and armed conflicts that involve narratives on ethnicity as ‘ethnicised’.

The Ukrainian-Russian conflict (ongoing since 2014) can be regarded as an example of such an ethnicised conflict. Despite the fact that it is a conflict that has many diverse causes including geo-political agenda, it has been recurrently ethnicised in terms of ‘ethnic’ belonging of eastern Ukraine and the Crimean Peninsula, which is an autonomous region within Ukraine. The speech made by Russian Federation’s President Vladimir Putin during the annexation of Crimea in 2014 claims, for example, ‘historic ethnic belonging’ of Crimea to Russia, and that Russia ‘could not abandon Crimea and its residents in distress’. On the other hand, the Ukrainian Government have been emphasising the importance of being a unified nation in face of the neighbouring country’s aggression, incorporating differences into one construct of being a Ukrainian patriot (Kuzio, 2015). Moreover, often the ideas (mostly propagated by the Russian state) of kin-ethnicities, pan-Slavism, and ‘brotherly’ states have often been used and circulated around the Russian-speaking (often post-Soviet) states, signalling that ‘ethnicity’ is often manipulated and used both in times of peace and conflict. As a result, the conflict is continuously discussed both in the media and within national and international politics, as well as in general public discourse through its relation to different aspects of ethnic identity. In this sense, the narratives, symbols, and claims that circulate around the Russian-Ukrainian conflict have a capacity to mobilise identities, often based on ideas connected to conceptualisations of ethnicity.

In this paper, I argue that the war-related narratives and attitudes have a potential to ‘travel’ to even distant (geographical) spaces. I suggest that it is useful to think of this phenomenon as conflict deterritorialisation, while the process of the actual enactment of the war-related narratives, symbols, and attitudes in another setting – as conflict reterritorialisation. It is the latter processes of embedment/reflection or reterritorialisation of symbols, narratives, and attitudes of the armed ‘homeland’ conflict in the diaspora setting that I situate this paper, by looking at the specific example of the Ukrainian-Russian conflict and Ukrainians and Russians in Sweden.

I proceed with a short discussion on the contexts of the Revolution and subsequent war in eastern Ukraine to make the reader familiar with the general timeline of the conflict. Clearly, by focusing on the way diasporic individuals can reterritorialise the conflict in their own contexts, my overview of the conflict in eastern Ukraine is only cursory. I follow this overview with theoretical underpinnings of the article: deterritorialisation of the conflict in the diasporic setting as related to group boundary making processes. After the discussion on data and methodology, I present key findings of the study.

It is important to state here that while focusing on Ukrainians and Russians in Sweden, I believe that the phenomena discussed in this article can be similar in other contexts of western democracies. In addition, this article contributes to the development of the concepts of conflict deterritorialisation, autonomisation, and delocalisation that can explain different types of diaspora engagement in the ‘homeland’ conflicts.

A short background of the Maidan Revolution (2013–2014) and the ongoing war in eastern Ukraine and the Swedish context

The Maidan Revolution started in November 2013 in Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, with hundreds of students demonstrating against the abrupt decision of then-President Viktor Yanukovych not to sign a trade pact with the European Union. By December 2013, people around the country in Ukraine’s other major cities organised protests as well, while many were travelling to Kyiv to support the demonstrators there. The Revolution concluded in late February 2014 and saw seventy-eight protesters and thirty police officers killed on the streets of Kyiv, and the fleeing of then-President Viktor Yanukovych (Prosecutor General Office of Ukraine, 2019). Thereafter, a new government was formed. In March 2014, the Russian Federation annexed the Crimean Peninsula – an autonomous region within Ukraine claiming Russian ethnic belonging (Office of the President of the Russian Federation, 2014). Soon after, Russian-backed rebels started an insurgency in two eastern regions of Ukraine: Luhansk and Donetsk (OHCHR, 2019). The most violent period of the conflict took place during 2014–2015, including the downing of flight MH17 in July 2014 by pro-Russian forces in eastern Ukraine. As estimated by the World Bank Organization (2017), over four million people in eastern Ukraine, specifically the Donbas region, have been directly affected by the continuing conflict. By 2016, the number of casualties reached more than 10,000 (Amnesty International, 2018; OHCHR, 2019). In November 2018 the Russian Federation seized Ukrainian naval ships (OHCHR, 2019). Unfortunately, recent developments during 2020 were marked with many violations of the latest ceasefire in eastern Ukraine.

Sweden has generally been pro-Ukrainian during both the Revolution and the onset of war in eastern Ukraine (exemplified by multiple visits and claims of support by the Swedish Foreign Affairs ministers to Ukraine in 2014 and 2017¹ as well as strong commitment through international agreements² and humanitarian aid programs³) despite the relatively low number of people born in Ukraine (7,937 in 2016 according to the Swedish Statics Bureau (2000–2019)). Swedish media were also quite active in covering the Revolution and the beginning of the war in eastern Ukraine. For example, the main Swedish media outlet has led a special reporting on the ‘Ukrainian crisis’.⁴ Moreover, during the most escalating periods of the Revolution in February 2014, it also did live streaming of the developments.⁵ This coverage and sudden flow of information about Ukraine might have made the conflict more ‘palpable’ for migrant individuals and could have potentially facilitated different processes of diasporisation, through mobilisation and activism toward and based on the situation ‘back home’ (Demmers, 2002).

Theoretical framework: Deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation of war in the ‘homeland’

The concept of deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation was introduced by Deleuze and Guattari (1987), where deterritorialisation destabilises spatial boundaries and reterritorialisation embeds the processes in the new contexts. In this chapter, I develop a conceptual framework for studying the interrelation between war in the ‘homeland’ and diaspora, using the concepts of deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation.

Generally, conflict deterritorialisation is related to the detachment of meanings, symbols, and narratives of the war from its immediate location. The process of conflict deterritorialisation seems to be primarily related to informational flows, which make it possible for the narratives and symbols of the conflict to detach themselves from the geographical location of where it is happening (Bernal, 2006; Shapiro, 2011). For example, the relative availability of the Internet and smartphones allow people in distant places to stream live news or even battles within certain conflicts (Cottle, 2006).⁶ Thus, the war in the ‘homeland’ now comes in a more straightforward fashion to the cultural space of diasporas than ever before (Bhabha, 1994), which may in turn further mobilise the feeling of connection and belonging to the ‘homeland’ (Agnew, 2005; Anthias, 1998; Demmers, 2002; Vertovec, 1997; 1999). In this way, the conflict narrative becomes, to some extent, independent of the actual developments on the front line when deterritorialised. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that the modern immediacy of news travelling, as well as the possibility of instant interactions across space which modern informational technology facilitates, serve as some of the core mediums of conflict deterritorialisation (Brinkerhoff, 2009). The symbols, ideas, narratives, and beliefs related to the ‘homeland’ conflict can become deterritorialised, however, not only through media. Migration, as well as many actors, can be involved in conflict deterritorialisation, including: the ‘homeland’ and its politics; transnational organisations and NGOs; dispersed communities; and the countries of residence, to name a few (Koinova, 2018).

Once deterritorialised, the meanings, symbols, narratives, and attitudes as related to a certain war can become reterritorialised or, in simpler terms, reflected/embedded or translated to fit the new contexts by different actors, including migrants, diasporic individuals and groups, transnational organisations, and political parties, in the current country of residence (Gayer, 2007). In other words, it is primarily related to well documented ‘conflict autonomisation’ or ‘importation’. Féron (2017), for example, highlights that the symbols, meanings, and rituals of the war in the ‘homeland’ can be transported to the country of settlement in the contexts of diaspora. However, in the country of settlement, these symbols, meanings, and rituals acquire new shapes and are framed specifically in the country of residence context (Lundgren Jörum, 2015). In other words, the conflict in the diaspora setting becomes autonomous of the war in the country of origin. Baser (2013, 2015) further shows that conflict can be transported to other locations, as in the specific case of Turks and Kurds in Sweden and Germany. Moreover, she shows that diaspora mobilisation due to the conflict in the homeland can be contagious, leading to the mobilisation of other diasporic groups. She specifically argues that the Turkish diaspora mobilised as a response to the Kurdish diaspora mobilisation in Sweden. Demmers (2002) has also claimed that there has been growing engagement of diaspora in the homeland conflicts due to the change in the nature of the war that is now more focused on the identity politics, which easily mobilises people that do not feel a belonging in the countries of their residence.

Reterritorialisation or conflict reinvention can happen on different levels and involve different groups (Demmers, 2002; Féron, 2017; others). In the diasporic context, ethnicised conflict, once deterritorialised, can have the capacity to reterritorialise into the group boundary-making and maintenance, in both defining the Self and the Other, as well as the ‘adversary’ group. More specifically, when constructing the boundary between the Us and Them, attitudes toward the conflict can become an additional layer and shift the boundary of perceived belonging to a certain ‘ethnic’ group. While this is not necessarily specific to diasporic communities and can also happen in the location of the war itself, reterritorialisation in a diasporic setting will also incorporate the contexts of the country of residence, the history of interactions with the group now perceived as adversary, as well as the size of the community. In this regard, the diasporic individual/group can become an actor of conflict reterritorialisation. One example of conflict reterritorialisation can be a sudden polarisation of individuals, based on their attitudes toward the conflict. Moreover, other actors such as different diasporic groups in other countries of residence, transnational actors such as NGOs, or even political decisions and policies toward other countries can become active in the processes of conflict reterritorialisation and construct their agenda around the symbols and ideas connected to a certain conflict (Koinova, 2018), for example the decision of the Swedish Parliament to recognise the State of Palestine in 2014. However, it is important to mention that it is not a linear or mechanical process, and conflict reterritorialisation can take place or it can never occur, depending on the specific contexts and factors (Andén-Papadopoulos & Pantti, 2013; Féron & Lefort, 2019; (Koinova, 2018)).

What is of specific interest for this paper is the relation between conflict reterritorialisation and ethnic boundary making and maintenance. I argue that ethnicised war in the ‘homeland’ can contribute to the shifting of group boundary-making processes and thus, in this sense, reterritorialise itself, both on the individual and collective levels in the diasporic setting. On the individual level, a sudden eruption of the conflict in the ‘homeland’ might make a migrant individual suddenly aware of his or her ‘homeland’, eventually leading to his or her diasporisation (Demmers, 2002). Alternatively, in the case of diasporic individuals who have a strong pre-existing connection to the idea of ‘homeland’ and shared roots and routes, the renegotiation of the meanings of ethnic self-identification, according to the developments in the ‘homeland,’ due to the different factors discussed above, might take place. Therefore, this renegotiation may potentially mobilise both migrant individuals with no previously strong connection to the ‘homeland’ and diasporic individuals who have a pre-existing ongoing connection to it, and thus make them seek the similar others and avoid those who do not share the same views on the conflict (Gayer, 2007; Koinova, 2018). This, in turn, might lead to the creation of new diasporic organisations/communities or a polarisation/clustering of the pre-existing diasporic groups along the conflict lines.

Data collection

The study participants were recruited through the official websites of diasporic organisations, Facebook groups that emphasised their national/ethnic/cultural/language background in their description or name, as well as through the ‘snowballing’ technique. I sent direct e-mails or posted a message on these Facebook groups stating that I am a researcher interested in how Ukrainians and Russians in Sweden experienced the troubling developments in Ukraine. In order to omit any essentialisations, I decided not to specify the place of birth or similar in the call for participants. However, mostly people who were born in Ukraine wanted to participate. Thus, the criteria for inclusion in this study were: a person identifies as a Ukrainian or Russian, is over eighteen years old, and has lived in Sweden for a significant period of time (at least a year in most cases). In addition to these basic criteria, I aimed to include as many diverse experiences as possible, including in terms of gender, age, social class, and region of origin.

In sum, I interviewed thirty-eight people, sixteen of whom are members of diasporic organisations. Thirty-one people were born in Ukraine and have been living in Sweden for at least one year (in two cases, a few months less but had plans to stay in Sweden for the near future) (see Appendix A). Approximately half of the participants are not official members of a diasporic organisation, but are instead members (or friends of the members) of the Facebook groups emphasising the origin of birth or language spoken (see Appendix A). Those who are members of a diasporic organisation were interviewed as both the organisation’s representatives and individuals. That is to say, the questions related to their own experiences and generally about the organisational activities. Those who were not official members of any diasporic organisation can also be considered as being involved in diasporic activities, though digitally (Brinkerhoff, 2009). Evidently, this implies that the study participants were a self-selective group, with a relatively strong ethnic identification or attitude toward the conflict in eastern Ukraine.

The study participants identified with different genders, had different class backgrounds, and came from different regions of Ukraine. They also varied in age and type of occupation, including unemployed, small and large scale business-owners, teachers, doctors, retirees, part-time workers, seasonal workers, and students, as well as those working without permission from the Swedish authorities. Most people who wanted to participate in the study had a clear pro-Ukrainian attitude toward the conflict (see appendix A). However, I received some comments and private messages from the pro-Russian oriented people who, unfortunately, did not agree to do a full interview. It is difficult to say at this point if this phenomenon is systematic or coincidental. It is perhaps partly due to the higher level of general activism and involvement of the groups that consider themselves under attack (Oberschall, 2000).

The interviews were semi-structured and included personal questions on the participants’ background, interests, and friends and family, mostly focusing on how they remember the period of the beginning of the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine (see Appendix B for interview protocol). The choice to conduct semi-structured interviews has led to a framing of most narratives in a specific way. However, during my work on the analysis, which included finding similar categories across the interviews, the themes introduced by the theory of the study (and thus the structure of the interview) were enriched, grounded, and reframed. A majority of the necessary coding was completed during the interview collection phase, which gave the opportunity to ask additional questions at the next interview if the previous participants described something that the structure of my interview guide could have potentially missed. Most of the face-to-face interviews took place in Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmo. In addition, I conducted video interviews with participants in Umea, Helsingborg, Norrkoping, Kalmar, Gavle, Lund, Jonkoping, Linkoping, Vasteras, and Uppsala, which covered the largest Swedish towns and cities as well as the different geographical regions. The interviews took up to ninety minutes on average, and depending on the language preferred by the participant, we spoke in Ukrainian, Russian, English, or Swedish.⁷ The interviews took place from late 2015 to April 2018.

Being a Ukrainian woman, I had easy access to Ukrainians in Sweden for several reasons: I come from the western city of Lviv, which is usually regarded as a very patriotic place; I speak Ukrainian with more fluency than Russian; I also personally know several Ukrainian people who were active in organising demonstrations in support of the Maidan Revolution. Having access to this network, as well as being perceived as someone who ‘knows how it was/is’ shaped advantages and disadvantages. While it helped me to gain trust and openness, the participants often assumed my knowledge of the situation and similarity of experiences based on their identification of me as Ukrainian. In my search for Russian participants, demonstrations of my neutrality became important. Moreover, after having written an announcement in a Russian-speaking Facebook group, I was immediately called a ‘troll’ and an ‘instigator’. Evidently, being an ‘insider,’ at least with the Ukrainian community, situates my role as researcher within complications that such positionality might have, including the difficulty of defining where the Self ends and the Other begins (Chavez, 2008). Indeed, negotiating my own experiences and ethnicity became forefront as both a point of challenges and opportunities during this project. However, recognising these possible tensions is necessary to understand the aims and reasoning in this paper, as well as how they might have shaped conversations with participants.

Methodological and analytical strategy

Analysis was carried out with the help of tools provided by thematic analysis and informed by the grounded theory elements (Glaser, 2002). I employed an ethnographic approach to understand the ethnic groups’ boundary drawing as constructed by personal narratives of participants’ histories, identities, and projections of the future, as well as their understanding of and relation to the ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine.

Thematic analysis typically follows six steps: familiarisation with data, generating initial codes, searching for themes, reviewing themes, defining and naming themes, and producing the report (Braun & Clarke, 2006). For this project, I modified the approach, since the data collection has been informed by the research questions and a research design that involved semi-structured interviews. Therefore, initially, two larger themes were identified. To find nuance through the analysis of other themes that could be placed within these two larger ones, I have found several sub-themes that were based on the generation of codes from the data. In doing so, I followed the method developed by Attride-Stirling’s (2001) thematic networks approach for the analysis of the data. Attride-Stirling (2001) identifies three levels of the themes that could be identified in the data: global, organising, and basic. Basic themes are generated through organising the codes. Organising themes accumulate several basic themes together. The global themes are interpreted as in relation to the research objectives. She suggests that thematic analysis can be done on the explicit or semantic level or implicit latent. The former looks for explicit meanings as narrated by the participants, while the latter searches for the latent hidden discursive meanings in the data. I opted to analyse data on the explicit level. Thus, the interviews were mostly used as accounts of personal experiences, whereby no discursive or linguistic analysis was planned.

I identified two global themes before the analysis, which were theoretically informed. The organising themes within these two larger or global themes, however, were found through the coding and grouping of the basic themes. Therefore, a mix of deduction and induction was used. Theoretically informed global themes that I focus on in this analysis were subjective identification and the relationships with others, including a change in relationships. In other words, the Self and the boundary-making processes between groups. This design, however, presupposed the focus on the perceived ‘adversaries’ in the Ukrainian-Russian conflict, and led to a lesser discussion on the solidarities and commonalities defining the ‘Us’ group. Hence, more focus was given to the splitting/change of the previously less problematic relationships between Ukrainians and Russians in Sweden before the war, to something more complex in certain cases since the conflict erupted. In addition, another fully empirically-informed global theme emerged during the analysis, that of the Other in relation to the understanding of the Self and the group boundaries. Analytically, I argue that the global theme of the ‘Others’ is a relational link, connecting the ‘Self’ and the themes of the ‘group boundary-making processes.’ Thus, the theme ‘Others’ is implicitly present in both themes, which were theoretically informed beforehand.

In the article, I focus mostly on delineating these global themes without attaching them to a specific person or experience, apart from that of self-identification with ethnicity. However, other experiences like gender, social class, or age play a role in the phenomenon studied. With this paper I seek to lay the ground for further work on studying the way the presented general conceptualisations can play out for people with different experiences. Thus, this study cannot be applied to the contexts outside of a diasporic environment in a straightforward manner, or to the cases where the ethnic/national identification is less pronounced.

Social practices of subjective identification: Shifting the boundary

According to existing research, belonging to a group is not defined by mere subjective identification. To belong to a group, self-identification must also be ‘validated’ by the Others (Jenkins, 1994; Wimmer, 2008, 2009). This external recognition is a matter of power relations and is a complex process intensified through gendered, ethnicised, and racialised identity politics in a given context (Chow, 2010). Belonging to a group is therefore a process of continuous setting and resetting of the boundaries between Us and Them, while at the same time defining the Self. Thus, at different points of time and contexts, an individual can both belong to and be excluded from the ‘We’.

As Demmers (2002) points out, if a migrant struggles with finding the sense of belonging due to discriminatory contexts or politics within the country of residence, he or she might try to seek belonging through a connection to his or her ‘homeland’. Other factors may shape this, but in the context of war in the ‘homeland’, the feeling of belonging and connection to such ‘homeland’ can become saturated. Further intensified by the media’s narratives, subjective identification with a certain ethnic group and attitude toward the conflict can overlap (Demmers, 2002). When we started our interview with Svetlana, a Russian-speaking woman from north-eastern Ukraine, she introduced herself in the following way:

I am Russian nationally and will always be on the side of Donbass and Russia. (Svetlana, 65)

Svetlana constructs the exclusionary narrative of ‘either/or’ in connection with the context of the war and ethnic/national identification, by implying that being a Russian presupposes being pro-Russian, and being pro-Russian intensifies her self-identification. In this sense, Svetlana shifts the boundary between ‘Russians’ and ‘non-Russians’ by incorporating her attitude towards the conflict. Evidently, the general topic of the interview (that she was aware of) might have shaped her statements. However, it is her own choice to use her identification as a Russian to substantiate her support for Russia.

Conflict deterritorialisation processes outlined above can contribute to the saturation of diasporic consciousness and reterritorialise into the boundary-making processes. This saturation can be built both on already existing identifications and connection to the ‘homeland’, as suggested in the case of Svetlana, but may also ‘turn’ an individual with a migration background into a diasporic one. In this sense, conflict deterritorialisation can be one of the diasporisation processes. Larissa, a Russian-speaking woman from eastern Ukraine, who has lived in Sweden for more than ten years, describes the sudden pressure she felt from her social environment during and after the Maidan Revolution as a result of a certain expectation that she should be aware of the situation in the place that the Others (her colleagues) assumed was her ‘homeland’:

… I did not know about the start of the Revolution, until my (Swedish) co-workers actually started asking questions. There was this one co-worker (…) who constantly kind of joked about Putin, and I thought, “he seems to be a bit strange”. And then a lot of people, here in Sweden, started talking about this, so I decided to read up on what is going on. (Larissa, 54, Umea)

Modern media and developments of informational technology have a strong role in conflict deterritorialisation. They have the capacity to bring the symbols and narratives of war to the distant places geographically and make the war in the ‘homeland’ suddenly present and palpable in the migrant’s life. In Larissa’s circumstance, the context of being in Sweden has reinvented her ‘homeland’, implicitly marking that she is not fully integrated into the workplace group, while also signalling perceptions of her as someone who must be an expert on Ukraine, Russia, and Vladimir Putin, as a result of her national identity. This ascription of identity has started an internal process for Larissa’s own negotiations of identity, including that of relation to ethnicity and belonging. Learning more about the situation ‘back home’, keeping up to date with the developments, and retaining the expert status on the conflict might further saturate diasporic identity through ethnic belonging and conflict attitude.

When such diasporisation process is at play, an individual might get a strong urge to ‘do something’ about the situation ‘back home’. Thereafter, it suddenly matters how the people around the individual might identify them. Moreover, it matters on the emotional level, indicating that in this specific case, a diasporic individual’s identity is not only tied to ethnicity, but also to the attitude toward the conflict.

The group boundaries can then be set and hardened based on the attitude toward the conflict, thereafter delineating the ‘fellows’ from the ‘adversaries’. Describing this process on the general level, a member from a Russian-speaking organisation recalls the issues that some members had with organisational behaviour:

So, when that conflict happened, many people started to act differently than before. They started to accentuate differences. They started to think: “if we don’t actively protest against Russia, then we are pro-Russian”. (Unnamed member of pan-Slavic organisation)

As the conflict reterritorialisation takes place, by adding an additional parameter for negotiating one’s ethnic group belonging, the old schemes can become less relevant. The pre-conflict focus of the diasporic organisations on traditions, culture, and other aesthetic forms of diasporic activisms can seem outdated in the context of a rapid violent crisis in the ‘homeland’. While the media and modern technology facilitate the virtual participation in the crisis, it also brings the sense of urgency and to be one with the ‘homeland’ by practicing group belonging in the same way, even though not in the same place. As such, these individual attitudes can result in some diasporic individuals’ decision to leave the diasporic organisation that does not have an active position on the conflict. In the search of ‘fellow’ others, these individuals can mobilise and facilitate the split of pre-existing diasporic organisations and creation of new, now conflict-generated, organisations. Alternatively, a pre-existing diasporic organisation might decide to take a stand towards the conflict, but then risk losing other members who do not see the conflict as an equally important matter.

Evidently, not all diasporic individuals will renegotiate their ethnic identifications in response to the crisis in the ‘homeland’ (Skrbiš, 1999). Depending on personal experiences, both ‘back home’ and in their new home countries, some will want to distance themselves from taking a stand toward the conflict and continue to practice diasporicity as an aesthetic formation (Spaaij and Broerse, 2019). However, others, as in the case described above, will find the need to practice the new forms of group belonging, and potentially leave or even create a new organisation, as in the case of the conflict-generated diasporas (Koinova, 2016). In such cases, for someone who considers her or himself to be Ukrainian, being neutral about the conflict is not a possibility.

Strategies of setting the boundary

Boundary-making processes are relative and continuous (Wimmer, 2008). Thus, depending on the contexts, time, situation, and others present, the boundaries can either shift or harden and become set. In the case of diasporic individuals with a strong sense of connection to their ‘homeland’, conflict, once deterritorialised, can reterritorialise into the way such an individual views the ‘fellow’ group member as well as the outsiders, thus constructing the boundary between who belongs to Us and to Them.

As demonstrated in the above discussion, negotiations of one’s ethnicity and belonging can involve the attitude toward the conflict. This in turn can lead to a shift in defining the boundaries with others. In the situation where ethnic belonging cannot be prescribed externally through the language of region of origin, defining someone as ‘truly’ Ukrainian or Russian can rest upon the investigation of their attitude toward the conflict. Such a process can reflect the larger processes of conflict deterritorialisation and suggests the ongoing processes of its reterritorialisation. As a result, I discuss several strategies that participants described for how they have interacted with Ukrainians and Russians during the Revolution and the ongoing armed conflict. It is important to note, however, that these should not by any means be considered as universal or exhaustive. On the contrary, these ways of reshaping ethnic boundary processes, in relation to the armed conflict in the home country, should be regarded with much consideration to the case and the context. In addition, these strategies are discussed by diasporic individuals with a strong experienced connection to the developments in the ‘homeland’. In other words, not every diasporic individual will necessarily employ all or any of the strategies highlighted. However, discussing these can be beneficial in further building knowledge about the processes of conflict deterritorialisation and the potentiality of its reterritorialisation in the diasporic setting.

Confrontation/provocation

Attitudes toward the conflict as a shifting ethnic boundary factor can lead to reconfigurations of the characteristics necessary to be perceived as belonging to the group. In the event that the behaviour of a perceived ‘fellow’ goes against the established configuration of characteristics of such belonging, an open confrontation can take place. This strategy allows one to check on how true the external identification given was before the current ‘mismatch’ occurred. One example is a situation described by a representative of one of the Ukrainian organisations:

Last year [2015], there was a scandal, this X organisation (Ukrainian organisation, name changed), which collaborates with this Z organisation (Russian organisation, name changed), organised a holiday celebration together, and (…) everyone started fighting. (Unnamed representative of a Ukrainian organisation)

Since the celebration mentioned above is generally regarded as a Russian Orthodox holiday, the fact that one of the Ukrainian organisations chose to co-organise its celebrations did not align with the group belonging configuration of being Ukrainian that some members of another Ukrainian organisation had. The problem arose because both organisations identified as Ukrainian, but one of them did not act according to the new (shifted) script of group inclusion. Thus, collaborating with the ‘enemy’ is understood as a betrayal of the group and showcases that the organisation, at best, does not care about the conflict and at worst, is pro-Russian. As neither of which is compatible with being ‘Ukrainian,’ according to the new boundary-making processes, the situation has to be somehow handled and fixed. In the case discussed above, handling the situation by an open confrontation could push the organisation in question to clearly decide on its position.

In the case that the confrontation is between two subjects who identify with different attitudes toward the conflict, but both feel in some way a connection to it, there are two ways in which the situation can unravel. An example is given by Ostap, a 50-year-old man from western Ukraine working as a builder:

During the Revolution, there were some attempts to provoke me, but it is from lack of knowledge, their own illusion that didn’t correspond with the other ones. One co-worker told me: “I will go to Donbas and will defend the Russian World”, and I told him, “yeah, but please go through Ukraine and tell everyone on your way what you are going to do, and then you will be shot even before you reach the area”. I feel sorry for those people. I also feel sorry for those who are very much defending Ukraine. (Ostap, 50, Stockholm)

Ostap describes a situation where he was confronted by someone who externally identified him as Ukrainian. Ostap’s colleague assumed that since he is Ukrainian, he must also be pro-Ukrainian. Then, the colleague built a strategy of picking a fight. As Ostap points out, ideas about the Self and the conflict are merely illusions that sometimes do not correspond. In Ostap’s view, a saturated pro-Russian or pro-Ukrainian stance stems from the lack of knowledge, or is based on an illusion and is not objectively true in that sense. However, being perceived as a Ukrainian by the others encouraged other individuals who had a pro-Russian attitude to provoke a conflict at the workplace in an attempt to clearly define group boundaries and belonging.

Avoidance

Another strategy to define boundaries is by assuming that even mentioning the conflict will change the status quo and lead to the necessity of defining clear belonging through the attitude toward the conflict. Avoiding any discussion about this issue can, in this way, implicitly create a boundary based on assumptions that connect to ideas on ethnic belonging, including the language spoken and country of origin. This becomes an active decision-making process that involves rational evaluation of the costs/benefits if the conversation should take place. In a situation where two actors perceive each other as taking opposite standpoints toward the conflict – mostly based on their own idea of the other’s ethnic belonging – they may decide to retain the status quo of the relationship by purposely omitting the topic of the conflict. To give an example, Taras, a part-time engineer, describes a situation at work:

I have this colleague from Russia, and his wife once came to work and started telling all these stories: “my relatives in Ukraine told me … ” and she wouldn’t stop with all this classic Russian propaganda stuff. It was difficult for me to stay calm, but she was with her kid, so I managed. The next day that colleague came up to me and said that he noticed I wasn’t fine with all that, and said that maybe it is better if we do not talk about this issue at all. (Taras, 50s, Vasteras)

As Taras has family in Ukraine, his connection to Ukraine is stronger and more practical than for those migrants/diasporic individuals who do not have familial connections left at home. Visibly, this active decision to not engage in any conversation about attitudes to maintain the status quo at work requires emotional labour. The difficulty to remain calm, which Taras refers to, signals the strong emotional connection he feels towards the ongoing conflict.

Notably, the avoidance strategy does not mean that the group belonging and boundary-making processes remain as they were pre-war. On the contrary, it is an active choice to define the boundary implicitly but strictly. The result is that the shared belonging to a group of co-workers can shift the attention and feeling of a necessity to have a definition of the attitudes to the shared experiences of working at the same place.

Control check

The rational decision to omit an explicit conflict such as the one described above can also lead to ensuring that the Other is one’s fellow, by exploring their identification before even engaging in further contact. The boundary between Ukrainian and Russian in this case becomes fixed at the explicit attitude toward the conflict: if the attitude does not align with the Self, the perception of the subjective ethnic identification can also shift.

… For me it is a question of principle, what attitude a person has toward the conflict. When you meet someone … . I will not speak to the Russian. I can always tell if it’s Ukrainian Russian or Russian Russian. This is easily noticeable. And when it is a Russian Russian, I can even pretend that I don’t hear them so I don’t need to deal with all that about finding out what their views are. But if the person talked to me straight (…), then I ask some ‘control’ questions. For me, this is important. Yes, for me this is important. (Olga, 37)

The specificity with which Olga describes certain criteria necessary for her to decide if even listening to a certain person is worth her time and emotional labour exemplifies how attitudes towards the conflict have become integral to her identification and everyday life during the conflict period. She constructs an explicit interrelation between ethnicity and conflict, and defines the group belonging by constellations of attitudes and ethnicity. The constellations of belonging that she describes exemplify the way conflict reterritorialisation processes work. The distinction between Ukrainian Russian and Russian Russian exemplifies the shift of boundary-making between Russians and Ukrainians. The category that allows for a differentiation between those is the attitude toward the conflict. In that sense, through the shift of the group boundary that used to be defined by the country of origin and language, the boundary-making process that differentiates the categories of being Russian or Ukrainian can become centred on the relation to the conflict in eastern Ukraine, and create new subgroups.

Discussion and conclusion

Ethnic boundary-making processes happen in a certain context and are dependent on both subjective and external identification (Wimmer, 2008). However, as I have shown in the results section, through a specific connection to ‘homeland’, the diasporic individuals may shift the boundary, depending on the political developments there. This modification of the boundary can lead to the reconfiguration of who belongs to the group and who does not. In the case of Ukrainians and Russians from Ukraine that took part in the current research, the group belonging is now based not only on the perceived ethnicity, place of birth, or language, but it also incorporates the attitude towards the ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine. Moreover, if a person does not have a stance towards the conflict but is perceived as Russian or Ukrainian, he or she might be confronted by his or her social context to take some sort of stance.

Subjective ethnic identification with being Ukrainian, which might have become saturated during the developments of the conflict in eastern Ukraine, may have become interconnected with certain attitudes toward the conflict. Being Ukrainian, for individuals with a strong mobilised sense of ethnic belonging, now might mean being pro-Ukrainian and vice versa. Thus, one cannot be Ukrainian if he or she has a pro-Russian attitude, or even a neutral one. Interestingly, it does not seem to matter if this person is a Russian speaker or not. This shows that the group boundaries might have shifted, especially in their focus on the defining characteristics. However, this identification becomes more complex in the case of Russian-speaking participants in the study, who before the war did not necessarily feel the need for ethnic identification but now have been pressured into deciding on their attitude toward the conflict and, through the modified characteristics of what it means to belong to a certain ethnic group, also on their ethnicity.

Moreover, in the case of the Russian-speaking participants’ claims to be Ukrainian, it might have be checked or confirmed by others by figuring out what their attitudes are toward the conflict. This is because if someone is externally defined as Ukrainian (by language or country of origin), they will be expected to be pro-Ukrainian. If this is not the case, they might be confronted. Therefore, the two aspects – subjective identification and external ascription in someone’s social context – are detrimental in the process of ethnic identification, also when interconnected to some extent with attitudes toward the conflict. The strategies of ethnic boundary-making may thus be incorporating the conflict in the homeland. In this way, the conflict is reterritorialised into the symbolic space of interaction for the diaspora in Sweden and their ethnic boundary-making strategies at least during the most violent periods of the conflict. Thus, the boundary-making processes can in some cases incorporate war in the homeland as an additional layer for differentiation, which shows a significant shift.

To conclude, it is important to note that the study participants are a self-selected group who already identify as Ukrainian or Russian, and the results cannot be extrapolated to those who perhaps have not made this identification. In addition, the study has focused mostly on Ukrainians and Russians that moved to Sweden from Ukraine, and who spent most of their lives in Ukraine. A more detailed analysis with participants who call Russia their ‘homeland’ could shed more light on the issues discussed in the paper, especially since this study did not focus on the different factors of nationality and citizenships.

Further research in political science and sociology should work on establishing a more nuanced perspective on how specific experiences such as age, region of origin, language, and gender shape the experience of being a diasporic individual, mobilised by the conflict developing in the ‘homeland.’ It is also important to study what happens in the diasporic setting after such mobilisation: is there further activism even after the conflict is over, or perhaps the diasporic communities dissolve? Most importantly, these questions should understand diasporic groups as contextual processes that can become more or less relevant, active or even fade out, depending on the intersection of the realities of the country of residence, contexts of the ‘homeland,’ and the transnational spaces (Anthias, 1998; Chow, 2010). Finally, while this paper specifically focuses on the potential of ethnicised wars to be reterritorialised in the diasporic setting, other conflicts, including political ones, as well as other types of wars and their capacity to de- and reterritorialise should be further studied in detail.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 For example, see speech by Carl Bildt (2014). https://www.government.se/49b729/contentassets/9bbda6b81b16402bbab82aa0c02c2e16/speeches-2010-2014---carl-bildt.

2 Government Offices of Sweden (2014), Ministry of Foreign Affairs, http://www.swemfa.se/2014/11/26/swedens-commitment-to-ukraine-deepens/.

3 SIDA, https://www.sida.se/English/where-we-work/Europe/Ukraine-/.

4 SVT, https://www.svt.se/nyheter/amne/Krisen_i_Ukraina_Teckenspr%C3%A5k?taggsida=3.

5 SVT, https://www.svt.se/nyheter/live/live-ukraina.

6 Ukraine Interactive map; Ukraine Latest news on live map, https://liveuamap.com/. The online stream of the Mosul offensive: https://mashable.com/2016/10/17/mosul-offensive-facebook-live/?europe=true.

7 Since most of the participants were pro-Ukrainian, usage of Russian or Ukrainian language in the interviews does not seem to correlate with attitudes toward the war in this particular study.