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Paper short abstract

The ongoing war in Ukraine reshapes family (im)mobility strategies in the autochthonous Transcarpathian ethnic minority: women sustain families through cross border care work while empowerment is curbed by patriarchal norms. The study highlight loyalty as an emotional retain factor in immobility.

Paper long abstract

Although Transcarpathia in Western Ukraine is geographically distant from the frontlines, the war has profoundly transformed it. Often referred to as an “island of peace,” it has received tens of thousands of IDPs, while tens of thousands of autochthonous ethnic Hungarians—mainly men—have resettled in the neighbouring kin state, Hungary. This has placed increased responsibility and workload on women, whose mobility is not restricted. In order to maintain their households, they cross the border on a weekly basis with their children, perform care work in multiple households on both sides of the border, and take over roles in the community that previously belonged to male domains.

Drawing on data deriving from qualitative fieldwork (semi structured interviews, field observations, and video) conducted since 2017 in different locations in Transcarpathia, the study first introduces the most typical (im)mobility based transnational family coping strategies in the ethnic Hungarian minority community. It then analyses the gender aspects of (im)mobility decisions and family strategies, highlighting the rigidity of traditional gender roles.

The study finds that Transcarpathian Hungarian families adopt diverse (im)mobility based coping strategies that transgress nation state borders. Furthermore, it argues that although war might accelerate women’s social empowerment through unconstrained community engagement (Webster et al. 2018), in the studied community this process is curbed by traditional patriarchal codes internalized by generations of women. By analysing (im)mobile women’s narratives, the study contributes to the scholarship on emotional retention factors of (im)mobility (Schewel 2019) by exploring the role of loyalty (Connor 2018) in immobility (Robins 2022).