ABSTRACT
This chapter presents narratives from exodus to the "Promised Land" that are organized according to the structural dimension of exodus and therefore along a continuum of family reunification: family unit in the United States, transnational families where migrants have one child in the United States and one child in Ukraine, and individual migrants in California without their family. The first narrative about Viktoria highlights practices of state-based integration. Dariya, in the following narrative, highlights the production of capitalist selves in exodus. In the third narrative, Kateryna also considered herself a Ukrainian "patriot". The fourth narrative, is about Zhanna who highlights the importance of migration waves and the powerful role of babushka even in exodus. Halyna, in the final narrative, highlights the power of the discourse of "luck" and "opportunity", so central to exodus, to shape migrant practices despite having left her family behind in Ukraine to work as an undocumented migrant in California.
