Narratives of Belonging among Crimean Youth after 2014

This paper explores how senses of belonging, place, and mobility are linked to each other in the context of socio-political change and displacement. The paper demonstrates how ‘movements of borders across people’ (to build on Rogers Brubaker’s expression) results in a non-binary construction of belonging across places and spaces. This paper explores the case of Crimea after the March 2014 referendum resulted in its secession from Ukraine and subsequent integration into the Russian Federation. This paper focuses on narratives of belonging among Crimean students who are currently studying at Moscow and Ukrainian universities. Using biographical interviews, it examines how Crimean students who moved to Moscow or Ukraine in the post-2014 period express their attachment to places. Analysis of the narratives of students shows that Crimean students in Moscow and Ukraine construct their narratives of belonging in relation to different places, but in different ways: while students in Moscow construct their belonging with a common focus on the ‘resources’ they can access in these places, students in Ukraine construct their belonging through seeking access to places where they find themselves ‘comfortable’ in or being at ‘ease’.