Paper short abstract:

This paper will analyze the solidarity networks that made the Polish humanitarian response to the current Russian invasion of Ukraine possible.

Paper long abstract:

In the earliest stages of the war, at least 70% of Polish residents contributed to the aid effort. It is estimated that the value of aid provided by families in Poland reached €2 billion. This wave of support and solidarity received high appraisal both internally and externally, with Polish people being celebrated for their solidarity and self-organization skills. At the same time, the crisis brought questions about the motivations of humanitarian compassion: what triggers the need to help, and what context facilitates effective assistance?

This paper will deal with those questions by contextualizing the Polish response to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine in the long history of Polish humanitarianism and Polish-Ukrainian-Russian relations.

Paper short abstract:

Based on the fieldwork in Prague, the paper shares the story of a Ukrainian initiative and local activists who work together on contentious acts against authoritarian regimes and far-right movements, elucidating the (dis)empowering transformations that the actors experience through joint actions.

Paper long abstract:

Since the first days of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, many residents of European cities and rural areas have shown unprecedented solidarity with people displaced by the war. Central and Eastern European neighbours welcomed families from Ukraine into their homes, helped by providing humanitarian assistance, and showed their solidarity through political activism. Based on the ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Prague, this paper focuses on the lived experiences of members of a newly emerged Ukrainian political initiative and the actors in solidarity with them. Their story of joint political actions has illustrated that, in addition to compassion and sensitivity to the vulnerabilities of others, political solidarity with migrants and displaced people is also deeply rooted in cooperation based on mutual trust, shared goals, and compromises in choosing how to achieve these goals. Looking at political solidarity as a synergetic effort between people from Ukraine and activists from the host society highlights the agency of migrants and displaced persons, who are regarded as partners, instead of being helped or rescued. Furthermore, conceptualizing solidarity as synergetic cooperation can better elucidate the complexity of power relations, especially since the joint actions of those considered “locals” and those taken as “foreigners” are inherently charged with empowering and disempowering dynamics. Bringing together critical citizenship and social movement studies, this paper highlights the (dis)empowering transformations that the new Ukrainian political initiative and Czech activists experience through their joint contentious acts against authoritarian regimes and the national far-right movement.

Paper short abstract:

The proposed paper addresses how the solidarity with refugees from Ukraine tackles the deeper structures of exclusion, creates differential welcoming spaces, and reconfigures visions and practices of deservingness in regard to various vulnerable groups, including the Roma.

Paper long abstract:

Refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine arrived in a country that in previous years had almost completely stopped accepting asylum seekers, where social exclusion of racialized minorities had been on the rise, and migration and migrants had been portrayed in the government- controlled media as threats to the country. Soon after 24 February 2022, the official government rhetoric concerning the displaced Ukrainians (but only them) changed. In a few months, however, social media and everyday talks started to contemplate who the ‘real refugees’ were in contrast to those unworthy of help. There are three groups of Ukrainians living in Hungary: those under temporary protection (around 30,000), the agency and migrant workers (around 100,000), and the ones of dual Ukrainian and Hungarian citizenship (no data is available). Paradoxically, it is the latter ones who appear as the most unwelcome. They are Hungarian-speaking Roma who are subject of anti-Gypsyism widespread in Hungarian society. Our interviews show that while some civil solidarians reproduce these prejudices in more or less visible forms, others advocate for working against this dire marginalisation and hierarchization of refugees. Our research team has been scrutinizing the patterns of Hungarian solidarity mobilisation in crisis situations since the 2015 refugee crisis. Most recently, we have conducted 28 interviews and ethnographic observations in Budapest and four rural regions to explore bottom-up solidarity mobilisations. The proposed paper addresses how the solidarity with refugees from Ukraine creates differential welcoming spaces, and reconfigures visions of deservingness in regard to various vulnerable groups, including the Roma.

Paper short abstract:

I draw on my own family history as a daughter and granddaughter of Baltic refugees of the Second World War to discuss the affective impact of memory on developing complex socio-cultural frameworks of who is (not) entitled to receive solidarity in the context of Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Paper long abstract:

The unprecedented solidarity with the large number of Ukrainian refugees across Europe in 2022 contrasts with the negative reception of the arrival of larger refugee groups from non-European countries since 2015. This suggests that the development of solidarity is confined to normative frames of interpretations, expectations, and values in societies. The war in Ukraine is situated in a European context that entangles multiple individual and collective memories, histories, and identities in a very complex way. Contemporary images and reports of the war can bring forth old, forgotten, or supressed memories that tap into Europe’s history of the Second World War and Cold War. Thus, the question of deservingness of solidarity in the context of Russia’s war against Ukraine cannot be viewed isolated from wider European history and conflicting memory discourses. By drawing on my own family history, I discuss how intergenerational family memory of forced displacement and exile associated with the Second World War can be an affective but often neglected factor for understanding the development of solidarity with Ukrainian refugees in the present. Even though family stories are a legacy of the past, they serve the present and future. The stories of past generations contribute to the complexity of emerging ideological frameworks and practices of solidarity in Europe. By communicating socio-cultural norms and values and transmitting specific images and ideas about assigned perpetrator and victim roles and memories of past sufferings, family memory contributes to shape ideas of who is (not) entitled to receive solidarity.

Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses the racialisation of the European migration governance in its Eastern Member States by zooming in on the specific case of Lithuania.

Paper long abstract:

This paper discusses the racialisation of the European migration governance in its Eastern Member States by zooming in on the specific case of Lithuania. The latter has seen the arrivals of migrants from Africa and the Middle East, along with Belarusian citizens fleeing the Lukashenko regime and Ukrainian citizens escaping Russia's war in Ukraine. While these mobilities occur in parallel, they have evoked a strict 'categorical binarism' in the Lithuanian government's policy response and discourse. Drawing on Kalir's concept of Departheid as well as post-colonial and decolonial theories on Eastern Europe, this paper argues that Lithuania's response builds on racialised humanitarian and securitisation agendas at the core of its nation-state building. Wrestling between Western and Russian influences, Lithuania's ambition to belong to the 'European space' is marked by geopolitical manoeuvres aimed at distancing itself from the 'authoritarian East' and confronting the question of race delineating identitarian borders of Europe.

Paper short abstract:

The presentation reveals preliminary results of an ethnographic inquiry exploring the relationship between members of various migrant groups in refugee services in Austria, and the concepts of migrant and refugee deservingness in these settings.

Paper long abstract:

In the last decade Western European national policies of regularisation have increased emphasis on education and labour-market participation. Policies invited the proliferation of institutions assisting refugees to obtain, in line with these policies, proper language skills, various qualifications and employment. The creation of such institutions, while having the mandate to channel newly arriving potential workforce towards the labour market, also created further needs for labour. Teachers, trainers, social workers, social pedagogues, as well as a great number or volunteers were recruited in these institutions, a high proportion of whom being themselves of migrant background, and in the case of Austria, arriving from Central and Eastern European countries.

The presentation would reveal preliminary results of an ethnographic research exploring the relationship between members of various migrant groups in such educational and welfare institutions in Austria, and the reshaping of concepts of migrant and refugee deservingness in these settings. I seek to analyse the effect of migration background as layered upon policy frameworks and institutional discourses, assuming that the latter set up the broader structural and discursive contexts within which individuals act and manoeuvre. How do migration and asylum policies translate into institutional discourses and into individual narratives of deservingness, when institutions responsible for their implementation are animated by persons who are themselves transnationally mobile? How do personal migration experience, migrant background and migrant identities of workers in these institutions shape discourses about other migrants, and their accommodation in the host society?