Diasporas at war

Presentation of the project

The recent years brought about two impor­tant refugee inflows from the post-Soviet coun­tries into the Euro­pean Union. First, in 2020, the unfair presi­den­tial elec­tions conducted in Belarus were accom­pa­nied by prolonged protests and unpre­ce­dented poli­tical mobi­li­sa­tion of the society. In order to avoid repres­sions, the leaders and parti­ci­pants of mani­fes­ta­tions that had not been impri­soned – as many as 100–150 thous. persons – fled the country and settled down mostly in Lithuania and Poland. Second, the Russian aggres­sion on Ukraine in 2022 resulted in the outflow of more than 5 million persons, consis­ting mostly of women and chil­dren, that spread across Europe, with Poland remai­ning the main host country. To respond to growing needs of this massive refugee inflow, non-govern­mental orga­ni­sa­tions in EU started to get involved and expand their acti­vi­ties, provi­ding mate­rial help and assis­tance to Ukrai­nian natio­nals that fled abroad or stayed in the homeland.

‘Diasporas at War’ project, funded within the Flash Ukraine programme of ICMi­gra­tions, focuses on orga­nised groups of Bela­ru­sian and Ukrai­nian exiled popu­la­tions in France and Poland, and the inter­ac­tions between diaspora orga­ni­sa­tions of these two natio­na­li­ties involved in the poli­tical struggle against the same or close autho­ri­ta­rian regimes. We aim at answe­ring the follo­wing research questions :

1) Reac­tion to the war. How did the two diasporas react to the poli­tical and huma­ni­ta­rian crisis related to the Russian aggres­sion on Ukraine in 2022 ? How did the extent and the scope of mobi­li­sa­tion change due to the war ? What types of actions have been taken ?

2) Inter-diaspora rela­tions. How did the invol­ve­ment of Lukashenko’s regime into the war affect the actions pursued by the Bela­ru­sian diaspora and the rela­tions between the two (Bela­ru­sian and Ukrai­nian) diasporas ? How did the inter­ac­tions start and evolve, did they relate to the huma­ni­ta­rian aid or go beyond the mate­rial help ? Was there any trans­mis­sion of savoir-faire know­ledge and prac­tices between the organisations ?

3) Poli­tical repre­sen­ta­tion. In case of Bela­ru­sian diaspora, to what extent the orga­ni­sa­tions aim at forming a poli­tical repre­sen­ta­tion of the country of origin ? In what way the huma­ni­ta­rian acti­vi­ties (to the Ukrai­nians) corre­late with the primary anti-regime acti­vi­ties ? In case of both diasporas, to what extent did the war change the commu­ni­ties’ self-percep­tion from post-Soviet or Russian spea­king into national-oriented ?

4) The use of social media. How did the both diasporas use the social media as an effec­tive tool of commu­ni­ca­tion and mobi­li­sa­tion ? Did the social media groups evolve into formal NGOs and if so, how did this process proceed ?

To answer these ques­tions, we plan to conduct semi-struc­tured in-depth inter­views with repre­sen­ta­tives of these two diasporas in France and Poland.

Principal investigator

Agnieszka Fihel