Paper short abstract:

This article discusses a formation of localized and apolitical types of solidarity, prompted by the war in Ukraine in the neighbourhoods in Riga, Latvia.

Paper long abstract:

In contrast to the immediate and hawkish national political narratives by the Latvian politicians towards Russia, on the ground, in the local, mixed-ethnicity communities, the war in Ukraine created unprecedented tensions and challenges. The war in Ukraine as an exogenous shock forced community members to juggle complex local relationships uncovering the embeddedness and belonging to mixed, twisted, and unresolved regional histories. In this article, I argue that a sense of belonging to the local community prompted local society members to sacrifice their political views in order to protect their local social ties, shying away from expressing their opinions on the war by saying: “it’s just politics”. As a result showing that the communities produce localized and apolitical forms of solidarity, contradictory to the national and global narratives. Anthropological methods, such as ethnographic fieldwork, allow to recognize the local social bonds that have a major role in the process of working through major geopolitical shifts within the society. The article is based on analysis of the data from ethnographic fieldwork conducted in neighbourhoods in Riga, Latvia over the course of 6 months.