Paper short abstract:

Thousands of Ukrainians displaced by Russia’s invasion are arriving to Finland, where they are greeted by a volunteer movement coordinated by the Ukrainian diaspora. How are Ukrainian volunteering practices transferred to the Finnish context, and what impact will this self-organisation have?

Paper long abstract:

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February this year, two social phenomena have intensified massively in Ukraine. One is the mobility of people fleeing war; while the war in Ukraine’s Donbas region had already created almost two million internally displaced people since 2014, the recent full-scale invasion has uprooted at least five times as many people, with a large share of them now fleeing abroad. Further, a vibrant volunteer movement existed in Ukraine especially since the Euromaidan Revolution, often responding to the needs of the army, internally displaced people, and other groups of vulnerable citizens much faster than the state. Since February 2022, this volunteer movement has expanded further and almost every Ukrainian has become a volunteer in some capacity or other.

This paper examines the confluence of these phenomena, that is, the arrival of displaced Ukrainians and the Ukrainian volunteer movement in Finland. The Association of Ukrainians has rapidly responded to the needs of their compatriots arriving to Finland by creating volunteer structures analogous to the ones emerging in Ukraine. The question is how the flexible culture of volunteer organisation, geared towards fixing problems immediately, fares in the Finnish context, where welfare provisioning usually comes from the state rather than volunteer organisations, and where a strong normative expectation of doing things by the book can lead to a degree of inflexibility. What impact will the Ukrainian volunteer movement have on Finnish refugee organisations, work culture, or principles of immigration reception? What tensions will emerge?

Paper short abstract:

The study of Bangladeshi migrants in Rome and London shows how migration can be considered a project of good parenting and self-fulfilment entrusted to the new generations, leading to expectations and responsibilities that can generate unexpected results and frictions, widening the generational gap

Paper long abstract:

Usually associated with extreme poverty, overpopulation and environmental instability, the Bangladeshi diaspora demonstrates, however, its being rooted in the capacity to aspire and on the concept of future built on the basis of multiple stimuli, in the form of media images and ideas of a desirable life that circulates in our hyper-connected world.

Reversing the old idea of migrants as agentless individuals, moved by the forces of macrostructural powers, they seem to be able to imagine and position themselves in the present, using their agency to take advantage of the possibilities the globalised world offers, in order to complete the life project they designed for their future.

In the specific case-study, the internationalisation of education system, and the importance of English as the key language for education, fundamental to accessing the global labour market, strongly influenced both the trajectory of their migratory path, and the collective narration over the historical significance this specific language have had in a country that emerged as a nation-state out of a strong linguistic identity. A three-years ethnographic research project, carried out on the Bangladeshi community of Rome, made it possible to overcome the dominant perspective of a periphery attracted by the centre, and demonstrated to what extent the centre itself, in a world where local imaginaries are heavily affected by the global circulation of dominant models, indirectly contributes in reshaping regional collective identities and activate mobility strategies.

Paper short abstract:

My paper looks at silent, non-heroic acts of resistance of indigenous people from the Karen and Shan communities against the brutalities of the Myanmar state. In the center is the vulnerability of the ordinary people caught in this momentum, but also their resilience and creativity (Kulick).

Paper long abstract:

Based on a decade of ethnographic fieldwork in Eastern Myanmar, Northwest Thailand, and beyond, my paper looks at the silent, non-heroic acts of resistance of indigenous people from the Karen and Shan communities moving to Thailand and to the West from Myanmar to the development programs and violence from state agents, humanitarian agents, and capital investors who try to manage and contain them (Scott 1990). It describes the rural Angst (Turner 2009) that was produced in the semi-democratic (but authoritarian) period before the coup, the impact of modernization on the life of communities, and the increasing popular protest the devastating effects of resource exploitation on livelihood. The paper examines the mafia-style strategies of state agents that have only worsened after the coup, and the increasing “vernacular” resistance against the brutalities of the state. The paper also describes alternative ways of resource management by the Karen and Shan communities and the impact of modernization and social and military control on the livelihood of ordinary people and on their aspirations to make a living by connectivity over distance. “Vernacular” (Brković 2020) thus describes local and humanitarian efforts at the grassroots level as well as in the Diaspora to counter social separateness. In the center is the vulnerability of the ordinary people caught in this momentum, but also their resilience (Kulick).