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Multipositionality of transnational Ukrainian kinship groups 

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Map: A Donetsk family's kinship network and exile(s). Author : Grégoire Le Gall

My project looks at the multipositional networks Ukrainian refugee families through space and time. The transnational and transgenerational experience of Ukrainian kinship groups, i.e. beyond the framework of the contemporary Ukrainian State in time and space. I question the practiced and lived dimension of the upheavals induced by the war in Ukraine (2014-) over the long term. Spaces of experience are rooted in the practices of large-scale geographical mobility in the 20th century. The collapse of the USSR, the separatisms of Transnistria and Donbas and the annexations by Russia have drawn new boundaries between different parts of the families. From the post-socialist period, families inherited new ties forged in the West, in Poland, Romania and far beyond. We also encounter traces, in the family tree, of older ties dating back to the interwar period, when parts of the Ukrainian and Moldavian territories belonged to Poland and Romania. These spaces of experience shape families’ practices of navigating liminality. To grasp them, we rely on in-depth interviews that enable us to reconstruct the multipositionality of families. 

  • - How have Ukranian family networks been built up over the long term?

  • - How and to what extent has the ongoing war (2014-) reconfigured Ukrainian families distribution? 

  • - How do Ukranians relate to places belonging to their familial space of experience and that have become inaccessible to them? 

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