Darya Malyutina

This timely book offers an integrative and critical approach to the conceptualization of diversity of social ties in contemporary urban migrant populations. It explores the informal relationships of migrants in London and how the construction and the dynamics of their social ties function as a part of urban sociality within the super-diversity of London.

Based on the results of a qualitative study of Russian-speaking migrants, it targets the four main themes of transnationalism, ethnicity, cosmopolitanization, and friendship. Acknowledging the complexity of the ways in which contemporary migrants rely on social relationships, the author argues that this complexity cannot be fully grasped by theories of transnationalism or explanations of ethnic communities alone. Instead, one can gather a closer understanding of migrant sociality when adding the analysis of informal relationships in different locations and with different subjects. This book suggests that friendship should be seen as an important concept for all research on migrant social connections.

While new migrant groups from the former Soviet Union have started to emerge in the UK, gradually taking shape over the course of the 2000s, researchers have been responding with numerous studies that have introduced these migrants to social scientific scholarship. When looking at a population with fuzzy outlines, different histories, citizenships, languages, political affiliations, legal aspects of their mobility and different migration patterns, the term ‘post-Soviet’ is used heuristically, rather than in order to define migrants as a group with clear boundaries. In this chapter, I review the existing scholarship on the topic, seeking to highlight its relevance and the main challenges faced by such research, tentatively structure this body of literature and disentangle its key themes, and suggest some directions for further exploration. I argue that further studies need to draw upon a more differentiated approach towards the diverse migrant populations, instead of using the umbrella terms (such as ‘Russian-speakers’) interchangeably with the more specific ones. Research needs to be embedded in politically relevant contexts (such as Brexit), and would benefit from avoiding the focus on relatively easily accessible groups (such as middle-class Russians), looking instead at groups whose migration circumstances are more connected with risk and vulnerability.

Numerous Russian media professionals have moved to Ukraine in the last decade. These migrants can be seen as contemporary mobile, highly skilled, transnationally connected professionals who made a lifestyle choice by relocating to Ukraine. However, after the EuroMaidan, their move has also become increasingly political. Drawing upon a series of interviews with Russian media professionals living and working in Ukraine-and addressing their social relationships, professional practices and thoughts on return migration-I analyse the ways in which the lifestyles of these 'middling transnationals' can be affected by the political tensions between host and home countries. This paper draws upon the idea of transnational ties being not necessarily durable and supportive but, rather, flexible and multi-directional. I argue that the annexation of Crimea and the armed conflict in Donbas have altered migrants' cross-border connections with Russia; however, instead of tying them to a place and excluding them from global networks, it might also push them towards inhabiting multiple transnational spaces. These observations highlight the political dimension of 'middling transnationalism' which is usually not considered in migration scholarship.

This paper aims to explore the ways in which the Euromaidan, Russia's annexation of Crimea, and the armed conflict in the Donbas region have affected relationships among scholars based in Western Europe and Ukraine who focus on Ukraine in their work. This study draws upon the idea that knowledge production is never an individual endeavour, hence the effect of political crises on scholarly communities may be particularly traumatising, leading to a polarisation within the intellectual field. Drawing upon a series of interviews with social scientists and humanities scholars specialising on Ukraine, I discuss the ways in which negative changes expressed themselves, the connections that were perceived as particularly affected, ideas of positive changes, reconciliation, and the development of new ties and collaborations.
On the one hand, the conflict has had a strong impact on relationships within the field of Ukrainian Studies and beyond, in terms of disrupting both local and transnational connections in the real and virtual spaces of universities, conferences, and social media discussions. Increasingly militant language has been used to describe the shifts in academic relationships that have happened over the recent few years. Typically, relationships with Russian scholars are mentioned as being particularly affected. While opinions on perspectives of traveling to Russia vary, not crossing its borders often becomes a political decision. The language used by the researchers to describe changes includes emotionally and politically charged descriptions of academics, mostly centred on the ideas of “taking sides”.
On the other hand, the destructive effect has been far from universal. The ideas of reconciliation and reformatting of problematic relationships amongst researchers seem to be discussed by an increasing number of scholars. These discussions focus on the new transnational ways of conducting research, struggles to maintain the connections, establishing new contacts, drawing upon political solidarity, rather than differences, and thinking about the need to (re-)establish a dialogue on a larger scale in the future.

В этой статье рассматриваются некоторые сложности, с которыми сталкиваются исследователи связанных с Украиной тем в контексте Евромайдана, аннексии Крыма Россией и вооруженного конфликта на востоке Украины. Во-первых, я анализирую соображения «ненанесения вреда» субъектам исследования и избегания возможных рисков для самих исследователей. Во-вторых, я обращаюсь к ограничительному влиянию конфликта на процессы написания текстов учеными. В-третьих, я рассматриваю тему напряженности и разрыва отношений в исследовательских сообществах, которые могут повлиять на процессы совместного производства знания. Основываясь на серии интервью с исследователями Украины, эта статья представляет собой попытку анализа непростых моментов в деятельности ученых в политически чувствительных ситуациях.


This paper addresses some of the challenges that Euromaidan, Russia’s annexation of Crimea, and the armed conflict in the East of Ukraine present to the work of researchers who study Ukraine-related issues. Firstly, I explore the considerations of ‘doing no harm’ to the research subjects and avoiding the possible hazards to the researcher themselves. Secondly, I look at the conflict’s limiting impact on scholarly writing. Thirdly, I look at potential tensions and splits within research communities that might affect the processes of collaborative production of knowledge. Based upon a series of interviews with scholars of Ukraine, this paper seeks to analyse some of the difficulties facing academics in politically sensitive situations.

Since the 2004 Orange Revolution, Ukrainian media have provided a number of Russian journalists an alternative place to continue their career, whether they were looking for a comparatively free and pluralistic media space, a new job, or safety. The number of Russian media professionals in Ukraine increased in the subsequent years. Euromaidan and the annexation of Crimea in 2014, followed by Russia’s military intervention in Donbas, have contributed to decisions to move or extend their stay in Ukraine. However, these events have also complicated the position of Russian journalists in Ukraine.This paper seeks to explore the challenges connected with being a Russian journalist and working in Ukraine-based media during Russia’s hybrid war against Ukraine. This population of migrant media workers has arrived from an aggressor country, where mainstream media have been producing manipulative anti-Ukrainian discourse. They are diverse in terms of social backgrounds and migration histories, but mostly are qualified and experienced professionals. They do not form a tightly knit migrant community, and do not work for media outlets targeting such a community. This article addresses the experiences of a number of these media personalities, drawing upon a series of interviews conducted in late 2015, and open source materials. I argue that the Maidan, the annexation of Crimea, and the ongoing conflict have had a significant impact on Russian migrant journalists in Ukraine, by providing a migration context, influencing their work ethics and making them particularly sensitive to the ideas of responsibility and journalistic subjectivity.

Friendship is increasingly drawing attention as a concept used to explain the variety of ways in which migrants develop and sustain local and transnational relations. The advantage of this approach is its focus on social capital and those ‘sustaining and inspirational aspects’ of friendship that contribute to shaping different aspects of mobile individuals’ lives (Conradson and Latham, 2005: 301), instead of interpreting migrant sociality and urban conviviality in super-diverse conditions in terms of ethnic communities. At the same time, the focus on friendship suggests the contingent and nuanced character of these close social ties. Drawing upon an ethnographic case study of a group of young Russian-speaking migrants from post-Soviet countries and their social relationships in a London bar, this article explores the role of friendship in a migrant group located within a particular physical and social space. The place served as an important social junction, and its Russian-speaking network of bartenders and regulars was a source of friendly support and empowerment for its members, helping them confront feelings of marginality. However, close and intimate ties were also at times connected with power relations, reflecting social divisions and the reinforcement of ethnic/national stereotypes regarding those excluded from this social network. This article highlights that friendship encompasses a diverse and dynamic range of inclusionary and exclusionary practices, and discusses how migrant sociality can be negotiated through these practices.

This paper aims to discuss some of the ethical quandaries that arise in the process of qualitative research on social protest, and explores the challenges posed by negotiating the engaged researcher’s national/ethnic origin and gender in the course of fieldwork. It focuses on an ethnographic study of Ukrainian protest activism in London during the Euromaidan and Russia’s intervention in East Ukraine, conducted by a female Russian researcher in 2013-2014.

While fieldwork created challenges for the ethnographer, both as a Russian national participating in Ukrainian protests against Russia’s military aggression, and as a female subject to some sexist treatment from male activists, it reflected the multifaceted nature of the researcher’s positionality and shifting power relations in the field. These experiences linked to broader questions, such as the complicated relationship between Russian and Ukrainian identities that has been existing in Ukraine’s history and has become tenser in the current conflict, and problematic gender issues connected with women’s participation in Ukrainian activism. “Taking sides” as a researcher provided insights into and personal experience of the problems and tensions associated with the movement. Provided that some distance is kept from the participants in the course of political protest ethnography, and critical reflection is employed at all stages, engaged research is a valid and valuable approach to accessing rich ethnographic material.

This paper explores the implications of shared femininity in a qualitative study of friendship networks amongst Russian-speaking migrants in London by a Russian researcher. Drawing upon feminist literature on the complexities of women interviewing women, I outline the reflexive approach to positionality informing power relations and establishment of trust in the relationship between the researcher and the researched. The examples of interviewing a friend and two friendly strangers demonstrate the ways of negotiating mutual positions in the interaction. Shared gender is regarded as partially, but not universally, promoting rapport, taking into account the intersectionality of multiple differences between women. Considering the researcher's positionality has been presented in this paper as a means of making similarities and differences between participants useful for the critical interpretation of the work, and using its relevant aspects for building a positive, open, and more equal interaction.