Whose is Crimea?: Contested Sovereignty and Regional Identity

Beyond the Territorial Trap?: The Geographic Interrogation of Sovereignty

“…Naïve at best is the notion that a post-sovereign international system would be any more just than the current order (Agnew 2005;2009). Third, shifting norms associated with sovereignty will condition how state actors attempt to justify their claims in territorial conflicts, as seen in disputes over Crimea (Charron, 2016), Kashmir (Osuri, 2017), Nagorno-Karabakh (Borgen, 2007;Blakkisrud, Kolstø, 2012), and multiple other examples in Eurasia (Kofanov et al, 2018) and beyond (Caspersen, 2013). Fourth, weaker countries, recognizing that sovereignty's banishment likely would benefit the more powerful states, often see sovereignty as a "resource to be cultivated and exploited" (Peterson, 1998, p. 179).…”

Borders moving across people: Narratives of belonging among Crimean youth after 2014

“…Similarly, 3 in his pre-2014 research on identities of Crimeans, Charron (2016) has shown that Crimeans exhibit a strong sense of belonging to the region: ‘Crimeans’ senses of territorial belonging were not primarily oriented towards either Ukraine or Russia, but rooted instead in regional identities informed by competing national narratives about Crimea’ (Charron, 2016: 245). Some scholars also imply that the Ukrainian national identity project may diverge from the way some parts of the population see themselves, which results in local renegotiation of Ukrainian identity as constructed by the state in order for these people to better fit in, creating strong regional self-identification within Ukraine (Selivestrova, 2017: 62; see also Polese and Wylegala, 2008; Richardson, 2008; Rodgers, 2006; Tereshchenko, 2013).…”

“…Study participants who spoke of a sense of belonging to Crimea (approximately one-third of those interviewed) associate the region first and foremost with emotional resources and the fulfillment of emotional needs (affective belonging). This place association is also linked with a reconciliatory construct that allows students to think of themselves as not exclusively Russian, Ukrainian, or pertaining to any specific cultural or ethnic group, but through a regional category that can reconcile different identities, echoing the findings of Wilson (2002) and Charron (2016).…”