Taking Stock of Refugee Experiences: Ukrainians Abroad after the Russian Invasion

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

Three years on after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia, the war in that country has become background noise to many people not directly involved in this conflict, knowledge or memory of it attenuated by more recent stories in the news-cycle. Yet, as the recent row between Trump and Zelensky has highlighted, the war is still very much a factor in the broader geopolitics of the world. Part of this has to do with how the memory of Russian aggression is carried abroad and articulated in different contexts by Ukrainians fleeing the fighting. The papers on this panel interrogate the topic of how Ukraine experiences affect the host societies that take in these refugees, and how, in turn, the memory politics and political machinations of host societies affect the longitudinal reception and perception of these refugees. This is an important topic to examine, as we still know relatively little about how collective memory may be shaped by outside mass-based forces and to what extent the phenomenon of "compassion fatigue" affects this dynamic. Relaying on original survey data and in-depth interviews, the three papers on this panel all examine these phenomenon, albeit from different starting places and conceptual/theoretical approaches.

Sub Unit

• Politics/Law

Chair

• Mark Nathan Kramer, Harvard U

Papers

• Ukrainian Refugees in Poland: War Narratives, Historical Memory, and Compassion Fatigue - George Soroka, Harvard U

• Displaced Histories: What Ukrainians in Poland Make of World War II after February 2022 - Félix Krawatzek, ZOiS Berlin (Germany)

• Evolution of Ukrainian National Consciousness in Time of War and Exile - Daniel Jacob Epstein, Harvard U

Discussant

• Mark Nathan Kramer, Harvard U