Paper short abstract:

Examining the nexus between housing and displacement in the aftermath of the Donbas war in Ukraine, this paper presents two examples of political subjectivity entwining with conceptions of property.

Paper long abstract:

This paper investigates the nexus between housing and displacement in the aftermath of the war in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region since 2014, prior to Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. Housing emerged as the main concern for internally displaced people (IDPs) from Donbas, who emphasised the need to find a permanent, state-led resolution to their housing needs and criticised the interim nature of the state’s measures. Having often lost their own housing in Donbas to bombardment or occupation, the IDPs argued that the state should help them become homeowners again – homeownership being the societal norm in Ukraine. The IDPs predicted that the state’s failure to guarantee stability through enabling homeownership would only lead to the intensification of emigration from Ukraine and thus the loss of both taxes and political subjects.

The paper also discusses the case of a sanatorium in northern Kyiv, where a group of IDPs had been settled by Maidan volunteers in the early days of the Donbas war. Having withstood numerous eviction attempts and threats from the sanatorium’s shady owners, the residents attempted to “wait out” the owners and the Kyiv city authorities by simply refusing to leave. Such a strategy fits a pattern of appropriation of housing into personal property by long-term use. The issue of housing thus brings out in sharp relief questions about political subjectivity in war-time Ukraine and housing as a property object. These issues will be relevant with regards to the principles of Ukraine’s post-war rebuilding and housing distribution.