Practicing Belonging Through Religious Institutions:
Ukrainian Migrants in Warsaw
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Submission date: 2022-05-20
Acceptance date: 2022-12-22
Publication date: 2023-06-26
Polish Sociological Review 2023;222(2):151-168
KEYWORDS
ABSTRACT
The article foregrounds Ukrainian migrants’ perception of their social situation as followers of
various Christian denominations—Roman Catholicism, Eastern Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodox—who live
in Warsaw. I analyze their narratives through theories of belonging and anchoring. Based on interviews with
Ukrainian religious activists I analyze the Ukrainian migrants’ challenges regarding their religious and national
loyalties. The article shows how religious divisions in Ukrainian society entered Poland along with the migrants
and how Ukrainian national identity and place in Polish society are negotiated at the intersection of the three
Christian denominations’ activities, which thus creates a triangle of religious-national-political relations, in which
Ukrainian migrants constantly negotiate belonging to the Polish society, the Ukrainian nation, and the religious
communities.
FUNDING
The project is financially supported by the HERA Joint Research Programme (www.heranet.info) which is co-funded by AHRC, MIUR, NCN, NWO, BMBF, and the European Commission through Horizon 2020. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 769478.