Oleksandra Tarkhanova
Title
Dr.
Last Name
Tarkhanova
First name
Oleksandra
Email
oleksandra.tarkhanova@unisg.ch
ORCID
Phone
+41 71 224 2521
13 results
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Item type:Publication, Social Networks and Agency in Forced Migration from Ukraine to SwitzerlandABSTRACT This article examines how people displaced to Switzerland under Temporary Protection following Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine exercise agency through social relations and networks. Drawing on in‐depth interviews and participant‐elicited sociograms, I adopt a relational sociological lens to analyse agency in forced migration by situating action within embedded social relations and the temporal horizons of past experiences, present coping and imagined futures. The analysis shows that favourable legal provisions—particularly, state‐supported private hosting—together with high levels of popular solidarity expand displaced people's capacities for action by enabling social connections, fostering belonging and facilitating relational embeddedness. The article makes three contributions. First, it offers an empirical contribution to the growing literature on forced displacement from Ukraine by examining the effects of private hosting in Switzerland on migrants’ agentic processes. Second, it demonstrates how the social agentic engagements of forced migrants are mediated by how they make sense of their past and imagine their future, underscoring the role of temporality in relational agency. Third, it identifies a distinct form of agentic engagement in which networking and community building are not merely instrumental to agency but constitute its very expression.Type:journal articleJournal:Global NetworksVolume:26Issue:3 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Kollaboration oder Existenzsicherung Das ukrainische Strafrecht und der Alltag unter Besatzung(2025)Following Russia’s large-scale invasion, Ukraine has passed new laws on collaboration with the enemy. The term is defined very broadly, and laws overlap in some respects, yet they envision very different levels of punishment. The number of criminal proceedings and convictions is rising, and sentences are becoming increasingly harsh. Often, no distinction is made as to whether a person in a position of responsibility acted for political motives or was merely providing for the basic needs of the population. The consequence is that people are being deterred who are actually supposed to be integrated. The laws and their application are inadvertently playing into the hands of Russian propaganda.Type:journal articleJournal:Zeitschrift OSTEUROPAVolume:11-12 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Forced displacement in Ukraine: understanding the decision-making process(2024-01-01); Daryna PyrogovaThe Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 resulted in millions of people being internally displaced and seeking refuge abroad. European countries responded with favorable socio-legal conditions and a welcoming political climate. In this paper, we are interested in how people make and rationalize their decisions and destination choices following forced displacement. The paper sheds light on the particular conditions under which Ukrainians made their migration decisions and illustrates how this case of displacement allows focusing on the decision-making process when many external constraints faced by other migrant populations are absent. The analysis draws on recently conducted qualitative interviews with internally displaced people and those displaced to several European countries. The study shows how displaced people exercise agency through migration-related decisions and choices based on specific rationalities, which contributes to the discussion on the rigid binary between forced and voluntary migration. The paper adapts the threshold approach to migration decision-making for the investigation of war-driven displacement and shows how it highlights the role of timing and affect in the decision- making process as well as its relational nature.Type:journal articleVolume:26Issue:2Scopus© Citations 27 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, ON THE CHALLENGES OF ENGAGEMENT AND DOING ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH IN CONFLICT ZONES(2023); ; Catherine Wanner invited several anthropologists to come together to discuss the challenges of conducting fieldwork in a region ravaged by war. The group consisted of four anthropologists, two who conduct research in Serbia and two in Ukraine. The group discussed the ethical complications that arise for anthropologists whose field site is or was the site of war as well as the responsibilities war creates for anthropologists who respond to the outbreak of armed combat by writing about state-sponsored violence and the process of enduring violence. Sandra King-Savic moderated this conversation, which took place on 7 July 2022 at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland before a live audience. The transcript of this two-hour conversation was shortened to fit this article and edited for clarity.Type:journal articleJournal:Ethnologia PolonaVolume:44Scopus© Citations 2 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Shades of protracted displacement: reconciling citizenshipand the status of internally displaced in Eastern Ukraine(2023-07-07)Following the war in Eastern Ukraine, 1.7 million internally displaced people (IDPs) from the Donbas region and returnees were required to maintain their IDP status to access state welfare provisions and freedom of movement. The policy regime of displacement enforced by the Ukrainian state and by the quasi-state formations in the region created marginalising and discriminatory effects for the people struggling to understand their new position vis-a-vis the state. As a result, they designed and employed various strategies to escape the differentiation displacement produced and reinstate their citizenship and belonging. This article explores the Ukrainian case of protracted displacement in light of the current escalation with millions more displaced. The research is based on the qualitative material collected in 2020 and 2021 on both sides of the ‘contact line’ in Eastern Ukraine by means of qualitative interviews and ethnographic observations. The paper contributes to the debate on protracted displacement by showing how people relate to and negotiate the IDP status and reaffirm their citizenship in narratives and interactions with the state. The case of displacement in Ukraine shows the power of social citizenship for people to resist the marginalising processes from within the bounds of citizenship.Type:journal articleJournal:JOURNAL OF ETHNIC AND MIGRATION STUDIESVolume:49Issue:19Scopus© Citations 12 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, The Politics of (Im)mobility: The Effects of the Pandemic on Movement Across the ‘Contact Line’ in Eastern Ukraine(2023)Type:journal articleJournal:Europe-Asia StudiesScopus© Citations 1 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Essentializing motherhood: The Ukrainian woman in policy debates(2018-10-25)In the last two and a half decades, the expectations of motherhood and the understanding of women’s reproductive choices in Ukrainian state policy discourses have been changing. Nevertheless, the regime of »compulsory motherhood« has remained dominant, stating that reproduction is what makes a woman. In this paper I explore how the norm of traditional »natural« motherhood is constructed in labor and welfare policy so that it holds through the policy changes influenced by the ideologies of state paternalism, neoliberalism, and conservatism. In the policy discussions from 1990 to 2015, women’s bodies are constructed as vulnerable, particularly in terms of their fertility, as a result of poverty, excessive working responsibilities, or societal moral »decay.« The goal of this paper is to grasp the regime of »compulsory motherhood« and to understand how the subject of voluntarily childless woman becomes unthinkable in these conditions due to the construction of mothering as a biological function of the female body.Type:journal articleJournal:InterDisciplines. Journal of History and Sociology - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, "Essentializing motherhood: The Ukrainian woman in policy debates"(2018-10-25)In the last two and a half decades, the expectations of motherhood and the understanding of women’s reproductive choices in Ukrainian state policy discourses have been changing. Nevertheless, the regime of »compulsory motherhood« has remained dominant, stating that reproduction is what makes a woman. In this paper, I explore how the norm of traditional »natural« motherhood is constructed in labor and welfare policy so that it holds through the policy changes influenced by the ideologies of state paternalism, neoliberalism, and conservatism. In the policy discussions from 1990 to 2015, women’s bodies are constructed as vulnerable, particularly in terms of their fertility, as a result of poverty, excessive working responsibilities, or societal moral »decay.« The goal of this paper is to grasp the regime of »compulsory motherhood« and to understand how the subject of voluntarily childless woman becomes unthinkable in these conditions due to the construction of mothering as a biological function of the female body.Type:journal articleJournal:InterDisciplinesVolume:9Issue:1 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Compulsory Motherhood, Paternalistic State?(2021)This book examines Ukrainian state gender politics and investigates how gendered subject positions and policy discourses are constructed within and through social policies. Set against the backdrop of the post-Soviet transformations, nation-building, neoliberalization, and post-Maidan political transformations, policy and discursive changes reflect and reproduce the gender norms that not only derive from these ideological processes but also actively legitimize and enable them. This book considers how the relations between the state and woman-citizen are changing: from socialist paternalism to nationalist affective bond and neoliberal sacrificial citizenship, which conceals women within families but also deeply relies on their unpaid work. The book brings the Ukrainian case into the European debate on conservative neoliberal transformations and anti-gender political sentiment, and by doing that, advances the feminist theorization on neoliberalism.Type:bookJournal:Palgrave MacmillanScopus© Citations 11 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Compulsory Motherhood, Paternalistic State? Ukrainian Gender Politics and the Subject of WomanThis book examines Ukrainian state gender politics and considers how the relations between the state and woman-citizen are changing: from socialist paternalism to nationalist affective bond and neoliberal sacrificial citizenship, which conceals women within families but also deeply relies on their unpaid work. Set against the backdrop of the post-Soviet transformations, nation-building, neoliberalization, and post-Maidan political transformations, policy and discursive changes reflect and reproduce the gender norms that not only derive from these ideological processes but also actively legitimize and enable them. The book brings the Ukrainian case into the European debate on conservative neoliberal transformations and anti-gender political sentiment, and by doing that, advances the feminist theorization on neoliberalism.Type:bookScopus© Citations 11