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Euromaidan Abroad: The Social Movement Motivations of Young Ukrainian Immigrants

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 October 2020

Alla Korzh Open the ORCID record for Alla Korzh [Opens in a new window] ,
Serhiy Kovalchuk  and
Adj Marshall
Alla Korzh*
Affiliation:
School for International Training (SIT) Graduate Institute, Brattleboro, VT, USA
Serhiy Kovalchuk
Affiliation:
International Development Research Centre, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Adj Marshall
Affiliation:
SIT Graduate Institute, Brattleboro, VT, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: alla.korzh@sit.edu
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Abstract

This article examines the motivations of young Ukrainian immigrants to support the Euromaidan from abroad. Existing research has documented social movements within their national boundaries and the participation of young people in them. However, it has rarely examined the expansion of social movements beyond their national boundaries and the engagement of young immigrants in such movements. Drawing on a larger qualitative study, this article presents the findings about what motivated 24 young Ukrainian immigrants residing in the USA to support the Euromaidan movement of 2013–2014 and compares their motivations to those of the protestors in Ukraine. We argue that motivations of young Ukrainian immigrants to support the Euromaidan from abroad manifest themselves in symbolic or psychological causes. Our findings demonstrate that the individual motivations were driven by an ideological commitment to systemic change in Ukraine, manifested through young Ukrainian immigrants’ (1) desire to end injustice, (2) solidarity with fellow Ukrainians, (3) moral obligation to raise awareness among the US public, and, most prominently, (4) sense of agency to contribute to the long-awaited change in the homeland. Our findings also show that overall, the motivations of young Ukrainian immigrants to join the movement aligned with those of the protestors in Ukraine.

Keywords

social movementsyoung immigrantsindividual motivationsideational causesocial change

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Type
Article
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 50 , Issue 2 , March 2022 , pp. 262 - 274
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Association for the Study of Nationalities

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Footnotes

This is an updated version of the original article. For details please see the notice at https://doi.org/10.1017/nps.2020.101

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