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

Abstract

This article explores how senses of belonging, place, and mobility are linked to each other in the context of rapid socio-political change and human mobility. Using the sociological concept of place-belongingness, the article examines narratives of belonging among young people from Crimea who moved to Moscow to pursue higher education in the two years following Russia’s 2014 annexation of the peninsula. Drawing on 38 biographical interviews conducted in Moscow with young people from Crimea, the article demonstrates how ‘movements of borders across people’ (to build on Rogers Brubaker’s expression) result in a non-binary construction of belonging across places, based on the access an individual has to constellations of resources different places offer. The analysis shows that narratives of belonging among young people from Crimea revolve around resource categories that include economic resources, emotional resources, resources that reconcile multiple identities, and ontological security resources. This study moves beyond analysis of identities as linked to nation-building in the post-Soviet space, focusing on categories of ‘place’ emerging from the perspectives of study participants.