REES talk on ‘(No)where to return: Ukrainian forced migrants in Romania’

Volodymyr Artiukh will be giving a talk on Monday, 29 January 2024, 5.00pm as part of Russian and Eastern European Studies seminar (REES) series at the Nissan Institute Lecture Theatre, St Antony’s College, University of Oxford. See more here.

Abstract: Forced migrants from Ukraine are often seen through a normative temporal perspective that posits an attachment to the homeland, their eventual return, and participation in a post-war reconstruction of the country. Away from teleological assumptions, this talk focuses on immediate practices and imaginaries of the forced migrants from Ukraine between temporary security in Europe and indeterminate danger at home. What is the relationship between displacement and emplacement in the situation of a protracted forced migration? How does this relationship change as the war approaches its third year? How do displaced persons reinterpret their trajectories? Drawing on the author’s ongoing ethnographic research, the talk addresses these questions through the lens of emptiness as a social formation that is characterised by the disappearance of the elements of a habitual lifeworld and a sense of temporality without an image of the future.