Displacement in War-Torn Ukraine: State, Displacement and Belonging

This Element offers a multi-scalar perspective on the transformational effects of war and dislocation on people's sense of belonging. It begins with an examination of the brief historical and socio-demographic profiles of Crimea and the Donbas, stages of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, main explanatory frameworks as presented in the scholarly literature and policy reports, with a critical re-evaluation of identity-based explanations, and the directions of conflict-driven displacement flows. It examines state failures and the role of internal displacement governance in shaping new lines of social inclusion or exclusion through the production of multiple physical, symbolic and bureaucratic borders. It discusses Ukraine's civil society response to IDP dislocation and IDPs' engagement through various formal and non-formal networks. The final section explores the multidimensional and complex (dis)connections that IDPs experience with regard to their imagined past, their new places of residence and the social groups perceived as important in their hierarchies of belonging.