This paper investigates whether the Maidan Revolution in Kyiv (late 2013-early 2014) and the ongoing armed conflict in Eastern Ukraine (early 2014) have been reflected in the collaboration networks of Ukrainian and Russian organizations in Sweden between 2013 and 2016.I use ERG models to account for the probabilities of ties between the organizations, depending on the network structure and individual attributes such as ethnic identification and the choice of a side to support in the conflict.Results suggest that it is support for a certain side in the conflict, and not ethnic self-identification, which drives the clustering of the networks during the most violent period.

Research on wars, including the ethnicised armed conflicts, has focused on the territorial dimension of war, and direct and indirect actors involved therein. This paper uses concepts of deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation to explore if the symbols, narratives, and attitudes of war in the 'homeland' can be embedded into the ethnic boundary-making processes and shift them according to the situation in the 'homeland' in the diasporic setting. I focus on the Ukrainian-Russian conflict, and interview Ukrainians and Russians from Ukraine living in Sweden. I find that attitudes toward the conflict can become intertwined with subjective ethnic identification of the Self and the Other, shifting ethnic boundary-making processes in alliance with the conflict 'back home.'

Building on different cases of conflicts in homelands triggering diaspora mobilization, we develop a theory of diaspora formation through processes of conflict deterritorialization. We argue that an armed conflict in the country of origin can trigger specific processes of diaspora formation in the countries of settlement and in the transnational space, depending on the actors involved and the particular context in both the home and host countries. We suggest that this specific non‐linear process of diaspora formation can happen at the individual and collective levels, and can both turn a migrant into a diasporic individual as well as mobilize diasporic individuals for collective action. This mobilization, we argue, builds on narratives about and from the homeland, the country of residence, and the transnational space, and can, in turn, lead to conflict autonomization in diaspora settings.

No abstract