In late fall 2023 and early winter 2024, this research was timely and remains significant to members of Edmonton’s Ukrainian diaspora - whether one immigrated recently or generations ago. 

Since Russia's full-scale invasion into Ukraine on February 24, 2022, humanitarian support for Ukrainians in Canada has been “salient and unprecedented” (Hyndman, 2023, p.1). The federal government of Canada crafted new temporary (the Canada-Ukraine Authorization for Emergency Travel) and permanent residence pathways for Ukrainians (Permanent residence for Ukrainian nationals with family members in Canada), in direct response to the Russian invasion. Since March 2022, over 1 million Ukrainian nationals have applied to the temporary program, and just over 200,000 (as of November 2023) Ukrainians have arrived in Canada (Government of Canada, December 5, 2023). Of those newcomers, the Alberta Association of Immigrant Serving Agencies (AAISA) calculated close to 29,000 newcomers arriving in Alberta between March 2022 and April 2023, with Edmonton being the second largest host city behind Calgary (2023).
 
Scholar Jennifer Hyndman argues that Canada’s “vast and well-organized Ukrainian diaspora” is responsible for the attention and mobilization of resources (p. 1). More information is needed to understand recent Ukrainian newcomers’ experiences resettling in Edmonton, Alberta and to uncover the motivations of second-generation (and above) Edmontonians with Ukrainian ancestry who are helping in contemporary efforts for resettlement. Janice Kriss-Moore acted as our community collaborator and populated our data gathering events through her networks. As such, this research was also significant to the co-directors of the Free Store for Ukrainian Newcomers (The Free Store): Janice Krissa-Moore and Jorgia Moore. 

For this research, Dr. Long and Sofiia Budianska collected all data. 

Dr. Long then shared this data with two courses she taught in Winter 2024.

The Anthropology of Immigration Course Project

Students in Dr. Long's Anthropology of Immigration course (a 4th year topics course) had explored immigration theoretically, and were well-prepared to analyse the material from newcomers’ life history interviews. Dr. Long integrated the material developed by the students into a report for The Free Store (see Research Report tab).

The Anthropology of Space and Place Course Project

Third-year students from Dr. Long's Anthropology of Space and Place class reviewed transcripts from the focus groups held with Ukrainian Edmontonians. They were asked to pull stories that feature what Scholar Koinova calls ‘multi-sited embeddedness’ (2019). This concept is defined as one's simultaneous connection to local spaces in Edmonton, to our city, and to Ukraine. This assignment allowed students to explore transnational and glocal (global and local) connections as part of their course work. The assignments associated with this work were similarly integrated into the report shared with the community partner.

Below are the material culture from different phases and aspects of this research project.