ABSTRACT
The chapter looks into the heavily understudied terrain of Ukrainian migrants’ transnational political participation and the forms of such engagement. Since 1991 large-scale migration of Ukrainian citizens has often been viewed as mere labour movement, without political interests or activities among the mobile citizens. And yet, Ukrainians working abroad have in many direct and indirect ways sought to influence the political situation in Ukraine and engaged in various forms of transnational political activism. This chapter will look into the activities of self-organised social media groups (Facebook) in Hungary and Ireland – two countries where there had never been a longstanding Ukrainian diaspora tradition before 1991. The groups were activated in response to the Maidan events in 2014; they consequently actively staged protests, collected donations for the army, wounded soldiers and internally displaced people and established direct connections with volunteers and recipients of their help back in Ukraine. The discussion is based on the systematic research into the online groups’ activities and their reports, as well as on a number of in-depth, semi-structured interviews with active group members. The interviews reveal individual motivations for joining, the choice of methods and the expected effects of such activities. The research asks: How did the recent political and military crisis change migrants’ involvement in the political life of Ukraine and influence the meaning of transnational and national citizenship? What kind of identity mobilisations and activity choices were made by the members of the groups translating their online activism into their offline lives and vice versa?
