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Paper short abstract

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among Estonians in Australia, this paper examines how the Ukraine War reactivates collective memory and fosters digitally mediated transnational civic engagement, expanding long-distance nationalism toward broader Eastern European solidarity.

Paper long abstract

This paper explores how Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has reactivated collective memory and reshaped transnational civic engagement among the Estonian diaspora in Australia. Drawing on multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork (40 in-depth interviews and participant observation), I analyse how the shadow of war reshapes decisions to move, stay, or return, producing hybrid moral and affective landscapes.

The findings demonstrate that the war functions as a mnemonic catalyst. Historical narratives of loss, exile, and interrupted family ties are reinterpreted through present geopolitical anxieties, producing a shared understanding that “Ukraine’s war is our war.” Australia emerged simultaneously as a site of professional fulfilment and as a “safe harbour” distant from Russia. Fear, guilt, and responsibility intertwined: some participants questioned whether leaving Estonia constituted escape, while others framed their distance as strategic—positioning themselves as potential protectors, ready to offer refuge to family members.

The paper demonstrates how collective memory of Soviet occupation and World War II displacement informs these moral negotiations. Historical narratives set a scene of mobility under imagined threat. Participants articulate vulnerability through anticipation, historical haunting, and digital proximity to war. This reactivation of collective memory strengthens intra-diasporic cohesion while simultaneously broadening solidarity beyond Estonia toward Eastern Europe more generally.

By linking long-distance nationalism with lived citizenship and digitally mediated “presence by proxy,” I argue that mobility under the shadow of war produces new moral economies. The collective memory, amplified through digital infrastructures, generates new forms of grassroots civic agency that transcend both homeland and host-state boundaries.