Workshop on Ukrainian Migration

Jannis Panagiotidis (Research Center for the History of Transformations, University of Vienna, Austria)

"Just Like Us? Ukrainian Refugee Migration and the Hierarchies of Race and Belonging"

The flight of millions of Ukrainians from the Russian full-scale invasion since February 24, 2022 is the biggest intra-European refugee movement since WWII, exceeding even the forced migrations triggered by the post-Yugoslav wars in the 1990s. This lecture will question the notion often heard since February 2022 that Ukrainian refugees receive a more favorable treatment than others because of their “whiteness” and “Europeanness.” Drawing on a long-term historical analysis, which includes the reception of political refugees from socialist Eastern Europe in the West during the Cold War, large-scale emigration from the disintegrating Soviet Union since Perestroika and into the 1990s, refugees from Yugoslavia during the 1990s, and the 2015 “refugee crisis,” it will highlight simultaneous processes of ‘othering’ and ‘same-ing’ that result in a complex positioning of ‘East Europeans’ in Western hierarchies of race and belonging.

Jannis Panagiotidis is a historian and migration scholar and the Scientific Director of the Research Center for the History of Transformations (RECET) at the University of Vienna. Before joining RECET, he was a Junior Professor of Migration and Integration of Germans from Russia at the Osnabrück University Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies (IMIS). His research mainly deals with post-1945 migration history, specifically co-ethnic diaspora migration, post-Soviet migration, and the global migrations of German minorities from Eastern Europe. In his current work he focuses on the history and present of anti-East European racism. His publications include the monographs The Unchosen Ones: Diaspora, Nation, and Migration in Israel and Germany (Indiana University Press, 2019), Postsowjetische Migration in Deutschland: eine Einführung (Beltz Juventa Verlag, 2021), and Antiosteuropäischer Rassismus in Deutschland: Geschichte und Gegenwart (Beltz Juventa Verlag, 2024, co-authored with Hans-Christian Petersen).

Miriam Finkelstein (Slavic Studies, University of Konstanz, Germany)

"May God Have a Photograph of This: Narratives of the War in Ukraine and Ukrainian Refugees in US and German Fiction 2014-2024"

Before 2014, Ukraine and its people were all but invisible in literary works by non-Ukrainian writers, appearing only as (predominantly female) labor migrants in West European countries. However, these narratives typically concluded with their happy return to Ukraine or successful integration into Western society. This presentation will focus on a fundamental shift in post-2014 representations of Ukrainians in US and German literatures by translingual immigrants from the former Soviet Union or post-1991 Ukraine. They highlight Ukrainian resistance to the occupation or focus on the fate of refugees to the United States and Germany. The presentation will examine how this work represents the challenges immigrants face in navigating precarity and downward social mobility, while engaging the invisibility of refugees’ experiences, Ukrainian history and diversity, and the effects of war on women’s lives in the host countries. The presentation will also address how the war set in motion an intensive process of remembrance of the manifold entanglements between Germany and Ukraine, including the tragic fates of Ukrainian forced laborers in Germany during WWII and Jewish immigration from Ukraine in the 1990s.

Miriam Finkelstein is Professor of Slavic Literatures at the University of Konstanz, Germany. She has published essays on and specializes in Russophone poetry and prose as well as in comparative approaches to Slavic literatures. Her main research areas include contemporary translingual and multilingual literatures, literature about migration and Russian-Jewish practices of memory and commemoration. Currently, she is completing her second book about memory and history narratives in recent Russian-American and Russian-German fiction.

Halyna Lemekh (Sociology and Criminal Justice, St. Francis College, USA)

"Ukrainian Refugees in the United States: Permanent Settlement Through Temporary Protected Status"

This presentation examines the potential for the approximately 300,000 Ukrainians who have been granted temporary protected status in the United States to return to Ukraine. Predominantly composed of women and children, this group exemplifies the growing trend of migration's "feminization," with women spearheading the move to a new country. The newly created Uniting for Ukraine program facilitates reunification with relatives, promoting chain migration. Their substantial human and social capital, coupled with support from the American public, various organizations, and the Ukrainian diaspora, plus the presence of ethnic enclaves, have fostered selective acculturation and the preservation of transnational connections. Adults gain direct entry into the workforce through employment authorization, and Ukrainians typically escape explicit anti-immigrant sentiments in a context where immigration is racialized. Therefore, even if a post-conflict Ukrainian government were to incentivize repatriation, their integration into US society could play a crucial role in the decision to remain in the United States.

Halyna Lemekh is Associate Professor of Sociology and the Director of the Forum on Migration (FOM) at St. Francis College. She earned an MA in philology in Ukraine in 1995 and a Ph.D. in Sociology from The New School University in 2007. Her research focuses on the social construction of the identities of newly arrived immigrants in New York City, the impact of immigration on children, and the relationships between different groups and waves of immigrants. Her book Ukrainian Immigrants in New York: Collision of Two Worlds focuses on the politics of identity and the collision of diverse identities of newly arrived immigrants in their adaptation to US society. Her peer-reviewed articles on newly arrived Korean and Central American immigrants appeared in the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography (JCE), the Journal of International Migration and Integration (JIMI), and the Journal of Borderlands Studies (JBS). She currently conducts research on Ecuadoran immigrants and Ukrainian refugees.