In Search of Cinderellas, in Naples and Beyond: Popular Culture Responses to Labor Migration from Ukraine

Abstract

The question of Ukraine's relationship to Europe has commonly been addressed in Ukraine with the assertion that Ukrainians, above all, are Europeans, and that they equally share-and contribute to-the cultural and spiritual legacy of "European civilization." This question routinely comes up in today's political debates on Ukraine's future membership in the EU, its regionalism and relationship with Russia. It also defines numerous intellectual discussions on Ukrainian identity often seen by popular cultural analysts as split between, or stretched along, the East/West, Russian/Ukrainian, and Soviet/national axes. The search for closer ties with Europe inspires new interpretations of Ukraine's history and its intellectual, spiritual and cultural traditions. Emphasizing past political ties with Europe is one avenue currently being explored to assert Ukraine's rootedness in the European cultural space. Revived regionalism, as in the example of Western Ukraine, helps to reassert local identities according to the region's past membership in European states. Andriy Zayarniuk has discussed the current widespread "Habsburg nostalgia" and the new discourse on "Galician/Habsburgian" identity in Western Ukraine as it has been unfolding in L'viv's public sphere, media, literature, and historical research (2001). Insisting on the long existing civilizational ties between Europe's West and East, where Ukraine is usually understood to be located, is another avenue. Another Ukrainian historian, Yaroslav Hrytsak, advocating a new definition of Eastern Europe as a "second-hand" Europe, reminds us that in historical terms Ukrainians have predominantly been consumers of European cultural values rather than their purveyors (2005). Despite the differences

Bringing the Virus Back Home: Media Representations of Ukrainian Labour Migrants in a Time of Pandemic

“…21 Further, Natalia Shostak (later Khanenko-Friesen) argues that labour migration is discursively "constructed as a modern large-scale social drama of Ukrainian society unfolding in the imagined and lived shifting dualities of europe's here and there." 22 The discourse on labour migration reorganizes Ukrainians' understanding of their own country as well as "the abroad," and at the same time constructs an ambiguous and contradictory imagery of the labour migrant as "an ambivalent if not deviant figure," and as a "figure of absence," that is, absent from his or her family, local community, and homeland. 23 The ambiguous labour migrant is thus variously portrayed as a victim, a betrayer of family and nation, a saviour, an economical entrepreneur and agent of change, whose monetary contribution through remittances helps to strengthen the Ukrainian transitional economy.…”

How Transnational Mothering is Seen to be ‘Troubling’: Contesting and Reframing Mothering

“…A special thanks to Jane McCarthy. We also would like to thank A. Kazlauskaitė, who participated in analysis of selected articles on transnational families published in national press and Internet media portals in Lithuania between 2004 and2006, and I. Bielevičiūtė, R. Butėnaitė, L. Kanapienienė, G. Kurlevičiūtė, andG. Martinkėnė…”

“…The portrayal of female mobility in particular has been addressed in research studies on family migration. The literature review reveals that in the media and public debates on the absence of parents, especially mothers, the mobility of Ukrainian women is represented as an anomaly (Shostak, 2006). The ‘everyday normality’ of Polish and Ukrainian transnational families are morally charged and displayed through the images of ‘pathological family relations’ and ‘neglectful motherhood’ (Lutz and Palenga-Mollenbeck, 2012: 26–29).…”

The morality of transnationalism: children of Ukrainian labor migrants write about migration, homeland and abroad

“…This massive outflow of labor migrants from Ukraine has challenged the post-Soviet national revival and ideas of building a new nation-state on the foundation of traditionalist family ideals, resulting in a wide public debate on the ambiguous figure of the migrant, who is seen sometimes as a savior and sometimes as a betrayer of the family and the nation, or sometimes as an economic entrepreneur and sometimes as a victim (Keryk 2004;Shostak 2006;Khanenko-Friesen 2007). Such diverging moral evaluations of migration movements from Ukraine take place within a context where the categories of homeland and abroad are still being reinterpreted.…”