1 00:00:00,210 --> 00:00:05,190 Hello and welcome to the Migration Oxford Podcast. I'm Jackie Broadhead, and I'm Rob McNeil. 2 00:00:05,730 --> 00:00:09,740 Rob, what are we talking about today? So we're talking about emptiness, 3 00:00:10,530 --> 00:00:20,070 which is it's a slightly odd concept for those of us who spend most of our time dealing with people freaking out about how full the UK is. 4 00:00:20,400 --> 00:00:27,540 But it's a really fundamental component of migration because when people arrive somewhere, they have to have left somewhere. 5 00:00:28,320 --> 00:00:35,970 The impacts of that, the impacts of people leaving in large numbers, in particular on on communities and places is dramatic. 6 00:00:36,330 --> 00:00:45,150 And in particular, we were talking to Vladimir Archduke and Maria JUNCO, who were part of the Emptiness Project, which is run from campus. 7 00:00:45,600 --> 00:00:49,600 And they a lot of their work is focussed on the former Soviet Union. 8 00:00:49,620 --> 00:00:55,080 And so we're talking to them. But it's definitely not just about the impacts on places in the former Soviet Union. 9 00:00:55,980 --> 00:01:03,030 Yeah, the discussion really reminded me of the conversation that we had about immigration and the way that so many of our 10 00:01:03,030 --> 00:01:11,879 debates focus on immigration and so few focus on the kind of politics of immigration and what as places kind of change, 11 00:01:11,880 --> 00:01:14,160 what will happen to them and what that will mean. 12 00:01:14,970 --> 00:01:20,880 I thought there was just so many resonances between the way that we think about them and also this idea that it's relational, 13 00:01:21,300 --> 00:01:24,480 that actually it's not about full places and empty places, 14 00:01:24,480 --> 00:01:29,010 but about the kind of conversation between ideas of fullness and ideas of emptiness, 15 00:01:29,310 --> 00:01:32,760 and that both of them actually can have impacts on people in those communities. 16 00:01:33,390 --> 00:01:42,630 That's right. And I think that one of the key things that that's that comes up in this discussion is the idea of an imagined past, 17 00:01:42,930 --> 00:01:51,060 an imagined time when things were vibrant and alive and when there was something there rather than a sentence of the now where you know, 18 00:01:51,150 --> 00:01:56,130 where there is nothing there, even when as we discovering, you know, through the conversation with people, 19 00:01:56,340 --> 00:02:02,850 even when there are actually scenarios where there's quite a lot of change and sometimes there's actually quite a lot of new arrivals, 20 00:02:02,850 --> 00:02:09,899 even in communities that perceive themselves as empty. So it's this idea that the place being empty or there being nothing, 21 00:02:09,900 --> 00:02:17,070 there is a very complex idea that emerges from people's idea of how things should 22 00:02:17,070 --> 00:02:22,440 be rather than necessarily from from a sort of empirical idea of how things are. 23 00:02:22,860 --> 00:02:29,970 Feels like half of our debate about migration is about the facts and figures and understanding what is happening. 24 00:02:30,240 --> 00:02:37,200 And then there's a whole other part which is just about perceptions, about how questions of migration and mobility make people feel, 25 00:02:37,560 --> 00:02:42,690 and that this is a really important flipside that we don't hear as much about. 26 00:02:43,320 --> 00:02:48,600 I think that's exactly right. And I think that that that feeling, that sense of a place having been abandoned, 27 00:02:48,810 --> 00:02:55,950 particularly when that sentence is that it's been abandoned by the state, the people that you're looking at, who you feel should be looking after you. 28 00:02:56,280 --> 00:03:03,629 What that drives people to, I mean, whether the idea that it might drive people to make certain political choices or 29 00:03:03,630 --> 00:03:09,209 get involved in conspiracy theories about why they've been left behind resonates, 30 00:03:09,210 --> 00:03:16,260 I think, really strongly with, you know, a potent post-industrial parts of Britain, the US, parts of Europe. 31 00:03:16,560 --> 00:03:19,200 It's it's a really complex and interesting idea, 32 00:03:19,200 --> 00:03:29,010 and it's fascinating to speak to these guys about the very extreme versions of it that are that are evident in these parts of the former Soviet Union. 33 00:03:29,580 --> 00:03:32,940 I completely agree. So let's get to that conversation. 34 00:03:33,180 --> 00:03:37,739 I'm joined today by Vladimir Archer, who's a researcher on the Emptiness Project, 35 00:03:37,740 --> 00:03:42,120 which is based at the Centre of Migration Policy and Society here at Oxford University, 36 00:03:42,480 --> 00:03:47,730 and by Maria JUNCO, who's a Ph.D. researcher, also working on the Emptiness Project. 37 00:03:48,960 --> 00:03:55,710 So, Maria, if you don't mind, I'm going to start with you. I'm and this is really kind of just something to situate us a little bit. 38 00:03:56,280 --> 00:03:59,579 In the UK, migration debates tend to be about the idea of fullness. 39 00:03:59,580 --> 00:04:03,840 You know, the concepts that dominate the debate tend to be about things like arrivals, 40 00:04:03,840 --> 00:04:09,420 overcrowding, competition for jobs and resources, whatever it may be, and controls. 41 00:04:09,900 --> 00:04:13,230 But the Emptiness project is at the other end of the spectrum. 42 00:04:14,740 --> 00:04:22,050 It is about emptiness. Can you just explain to us why this is such an important part of understanding migration? 43 00:04:22,620 --> 00:04:29,370 Well, I think if we just look at one spectrum, we don't get the full picture, so we understand why people come, 44 00:04:29,380 --> 00:04:35,610 but then we won't understand from where they come from and what are the push factors. 45 00:04:36,990 --> 00:04:42,030 So that's why it's really important to look at the places that are experiencing outmigration. 46 00:04:42,300 --> 00:04:49,740 It's just like in the debates, for example, in urban studies, if we only concentrate on large CDs and we don't look at smaller places, 47 00:04:49,740 --> 00:04:54,030 then we don't have the full understanding of the world we are living today. 48 00:04:54,300 --> 00:04:59,880 So that's why I think we only can get the full picture of what is going on with. 49 00:04:59,990 --> 00:05:03,650 Increasingly, if we look both at places of out and in migration. 50 00:05:04,490 --> 00:05:13,340 Okay, that's that's fine. But while there are fullness is quite easy to describe, I mean, we can imagine large numbers of people, 51 00:05:13,340 --> 00:05:18,700 the things, events and actions that will make somewhere feel full. 52 00:05:19,430 --> 00:05:23,960 Emptiness is quite an abstract concept. It leaves a lot of scope for interpretation. 53 00:05:24,260 --> 00:05:29,510 So can you explain? Is emptiness actually just a lens for scholars, 54 00:05:29,870 --> 00:05:35,120 or is it something that's actually tangible and meaningful for people in the places that you're studying? 55 00:05:35,720 --> 00:05:39,350 And if so, how does emptiness actually affect people? 56 00:05:40,280 --> 00:05:44,230 So I think that both emptiness and fullness are very abstract concepts. 57 00:05:44,240 --> 00:05:49,490 So we cannot have complete emptiness and complete fullness in our world. 58 00:05:49,850 --> 00:05:54,530 So there was one time I read the paper about impossibility of awfulness. 59 00:05:54,950 --> 00:06:03,080 So it's just very relational. So when we talk about emptiness, we don't actually mean nothingness. 60 00:06:03,410 --> 00:06:09,680 We actually talk about the sort of configuration of relations between people, state capital and territories. 61 00:06:10,160 --> 00:06:16,640 And this is an empty concept, meaning that people actually use this word to describe the reality in which they live. 62 00:06:17,600 --> 00:06:26,870 It came from that said, and Oskar's, who is the P.I. of our project Fieldwork, where people in rural Latvia will say, this is empty. 63 00:06:26,870 --> 00:06:33,620 That is empty, the shop is empty, the bus is empty, the house is empty, and emptiness is everywhere. 64 00:06:33,620 --> 00:06:37,910 Sort of like denoting that there was something there, but now it's not there anymore. 65 00:06:37,940 --> 00:06:42,130 So it's relational. It's always there. It was a school, but now there is no school. 66 00:06:42,140 --> 00:06:43,820 So now this place is empty, right? 67 00:06:43,910 --> 00:06:57,590 And in my view side, people in Armenia, people see a bunch or of watching charcoal, which literally means nothingness on actual nothing is not there. 68 00:06:57,830 --> 00:07:04,970 If you translate by Armenian standards and it's funny because the word one means also word of God. 69 00:07:05,330 --> 00:07:11,180 Like in the Bible, Word of God. And so it's so empty that even the word of God is not there anymore. 70 00:07:12,590 --> 00:07:22,850 And people say about smaller places, a bunch of watching people talking about how their relatives are out migrating, 71 00:07:22,880 --> 00:07:24,650 talking about how there is no money, 72 00:07:25,010 --> 00:07:35,990 how there is no possibilities, how there is vacancies in apartment vacancies, housing vacancies, other vacant buildings. 73 00:07:36,000 --> 00:07:39,890 So they come they compare this reality to what was there before. 74 00:07:40,010 --> 00:07:47,299 During the Soviet times, when there was a bus road, there was a hospital, there was a factory, and now everything is closed. 75 00:07:47,300 --> 00:07:56,160 The bus doesn't run anymore. And so on. They use this words to to make sense of how they live now and what was there before. 76 00:07:56,180 --> 00:08:00,229 So for them, this is a very tangible thing, but it is also very relational. 77 00:08:00,230 --> 00:08:04,100 So it's always in comparison to something else. 78 00:08:04,100 --> 00:08:14,360 And I guess that's really helpful. I suppose one thing that I realised that we haven't directly focussed on yet is the location of your research. 79 00:08:14,360 --> 00:08:20,570 I'm say both, both you, Maria and Vladimir. You're working in the post-Soviet socialist sphere. 80 00:08:21,020 --> 00:08:26,090 Is this something which is very specific to these locations, or do you think this is something which is more global in scope? 81 00:08:26,840 --> 00:08:28,760 Well, I think it's quite a global phenomenon. 82 00:08:28,760 --> 00:08:35,930 If you talk about urban decay, for example, or urban shrinkage, these are the terms that are wildly used in literature. 83 00:08:36,680 --> 00:08:40,790 Can think about Detroit, for example, which is a very canonical place. 84 00:08:42,230 --> 00:08:47,270 We think about Detroit, we think about ruins, right? We think about people leaving something behind. 85 00:08:47,660 --> 00:08:53,660 And in Europe, we can talk about, for example, Leipzig or Saint-etienne or I don't know, 86 00:08:53,660 --> 00:08:59,360 there is there's a bunch of empty places in in empty in places in UK also. 87 00:08:59,630 --> 00:09:07,850 So it's not only in the post-Soviet, but I think what is specific to the post-Soviet is this political component that 88 00:09:07,850 --> 00:09:14,270 the whole regime changed and and then there were a lot of wars in the region. 89 00:09:14,270 --> 00:09:19,970 So it's different types of emptiness. There is this emptiness that is produced by state neglect. 90 00:09:20,990 --> 00:09:29,660 When people are forced to leave to their places of residence to to find a job, to to get a better living. 91 00:09:29,660 --> 00:09:35,390 But then there's also emptiness that is produced by state violence, meaning war in displacement. 92 00:09:35,900 --> 00:09:42,470 So I think these things make the post-Soviet region the poor socialist region quite specific. 93 00:09:43,040 --> 00:09:45,910 But it's not that emptiness is just confined to that. 94 00:09:45,920 --> 00:09:54,660 It's interesting how you can also find a lot of ghost towns in China, for example, which is usually perceived as this massive, very dense country. 95 00:09:54,690 --> 00:09:59,450 So so yeah, it's kind of leaving the world of empty. 96 00:09:59,990 --> 00:10:07,219 Places. And they are all around us. But for some reason, they haven't gained so much attention yet in this colour and literature. 97 00:10:07,220 --> 00:10:17,150 So we are kind of on the brink of bringing this wider debate to not only to academic into the academic room, 98 00:10:17,150 --> 00:10:20,630 but also, I guess, policy and just to the general public. 99 00:10:21,470 --> 00:10:28,280 Maria, thank you so much. Now, Vladimir described the drivers of emptiness in this post safety space. 100 00:10:28,320 --> 00:10:35,750 Your your team has been differentiating between what you referred to as slow violence and fast violence. 101 00:10:35,750 --> 00:10:42,950 And Maria has just been talking about the concept of violence within that as a key part of understanding this post-Soviet experience. 102 00:10:43,400 --> 00:10:46,940 Can you just explain a bit what you mean by these terms, 103 00:10:46,940 --> 00:10:52,429 slow violence and fast violence and how they've manifested themselves in different forms of 104 00:10:52,430 --> 00:10:57,380 emptiness and what the implications of those of these concepts are for people and communities? 105 00:10:58,800 --> 00:11:10,530 Oh, yeah, indeed. We use slower structural violence and faster or spectacular violence as correlates of emptiness of different types. 106 00:11:11,230 --> 00:11:22,080 And speaking about slow violence, I would define it as a closure of essential resources for a potential development 107 00:11:22,080 --> 00:11:27,030 of communities and individuals and in these places that are emptying. 108 00:11:27,480 --> 00:11:35,670 And here we may think about structural factors such as systemic lack of investment in infrastructure and housing, 109 00:11:35,670 --> 00:11:41,820 in the lack of productive investment that would provide decent job opportunities 110 00:11:42,300 --> 00:11:48,750 and ultimately a lack of vision of the future in the in the people who inhabit 111 00:11:48,750 --> 00:11:55,409 this emptiness and in in the local authorities and places affected by these processes 112 00:11:55,410 --> 00:12:02,100 are badly connected as the consequence to to the centres of economic growth, 113 00:12:02,430 --> 00:12:09,390 to the centres of opportunities. They they become stagnant due to the lack of productive investment. 114 00:12:09,930 --> 00:12:22,049 And this experience causes the population outmigration, whereas those who remain in such areas describe their settlements as empty, 115 00:12:22,050 --> 00:12:26,970 abandoned places where the death is the only certainty. 116 00:12:26,970 --> 00:12:34,380 And have. This was the case in the MAI in the first part of my fieldwork, which I did in central Ukraine, 117 00:12:34,950 --> 00:12:44,550 in a region that was actually provided with the full range of raw materials, agriculture, even oil. 118 00:12:45,540 --> 00:12:50,280 But due to the lack of coordination between the state and private investment, 119 00:12:50,670 --> 00:12:59,879 due to the mismanagement and the inequality, this these resources did not did not contribute to the girls. 120 00:12:59,880 --> 00:13:03,210 They contributed to stagnation and people who live in such places, 121 00:13:03,720 --> 00:13:10,770 they refer to themselves not as victims of some sort of definite violence as as we would. 122 00:13:10,770 --> 00:13:18,089 You use it in normal language. But they hinted that they hint that they are victims of corruption, 123 00:13:18,090 --> 00:13:27,780 of the mayors and politicians higher up of greedy businessmen and oligarchs and mafia networks and so on. 124 00:13:27,780 --> 00:13:38,540 And this the the ideological correlate of of what's what was produced in such places are often are often demobilisation 125 00:13:39,720 --> 00:13:47,970 lack of lack of any resources for collective actions and the concomitant dispersed kind of conspiracy theorising. 126 00:13:48,840 --> 00:13:56,820 Ultimately, yes. So it was a little while at stake of our agency, whereas the first immediate spectacular violence, 127 00:13:57,510 --> 00:14:01,290 such as the violence of this war, has has an opposite effect. 128 00:14:01,710 --> 00:14:08,100 Most of my research participants in the second part of my fieldwork, which are now doing in Romania. 129 00:14:08,370 --> 00:14:13,950 So I talked to people who fled the war when they recall the start of the war that they describe. 130 00:14:14,100 --> 00:14:21,900 At first a debilitating shock. They experienced hearing and seeing the explosions on the 21st of February last year. 131 00:14:22,620 --> 00:14:30,790 About the end. This shock quickly gave way to mobilisation to an energetic and hectic activity. 132 00:14:30,830 --> 00:14:39,780 In a few days or couple of weeks where people people started joining efforts to help the weakest in their 133 00:14:39,780 --> 00:14:49,470 communities or to join the army or eventually to save the kids by leaving the country or leaving to another place. 134 00:14:49,680 --> 00:14:56,729 So as opposed to slow violence, the spectacular violence has this this mobilising effect. 135 00:14:56,730 --> 00:15:01,860 However, this effects they they bitter bitter all with time. 136 00:15:02,220 --> 00:15:09,870 So throughout my fieldwork I saw how the refugees started reproducing the patterns. 137 00:15:10,350 --> 00:15:14,999 This ideological explanatory patterns peculiar to slow violence. 138 00:15:15,000 --> 00:15:24,239 They resort to rumours to distrust in the states, to conspiracy theorising which which signifies something, 139 00:15:24,240 --> 00:15:32,730 which signifies the fact that they they feel they lose agency and they feel they lose potential for collective actions. 140 00:15:33,180 --> 00:15:42,120 And this this kind of dialectic between these two types, two types of violence they they persists with time with as the war goes on. 141 00:15:43,080 --> 00:15:44,370 That's extremely interesting. 142 00:15:44,370 --> 00:15:53,550 I don't want to go off on a tangent here, so I'm going to just kind of but it's interesting that Maria was referencing Detroit in her earlier answer, 143 00:15:53,820 --> 00:15:58,060 and in fact, the description that you're giving of of a world in which rumour and can. 144 00:15:58,140 --> 00:16:02,370 Spiritual theories emerge in these decaying places. 145 00:16:03,420 --> 00:16:08,700 Actually sounds enormously like the situations that you find in the kind of industrial heartland of America. 146 00:16:08,970 --> 00:16:11,840 It sounds similar to the kinds of things that we hear in, you know, 147 00:16:12,060 --> 00:16:16,740 that seem to occur certainly in sort of former industrial areas in the UK as well, even. 148 00:16:17,310 --> 00:16:23,460 Maria, we're talking about this in the context of countries, of countries of origin, you know, places that people are leaving. 149 00:16:23,850 --> 00:16:29,520 But it's it seems that emptiness does seem to have a relevance for countries of destination as well. 150 00:16:29,850 --> 00:16:36,900 Could you just I mean, elaborate a little bit on what your research sort of direct us towards in that situation? 151 00:16:37,710 --> 00:16:39,780 Well, I have two answers. I guess it is. 152 00:16:39,780 --> 00:16:50,879 First is that people who have lived in places that are losing their constitutive elements, they have been affected by that. 153 00:16:50,880 --> 00:16:55,800 And I think that when they move to some other places, they definitely care. 154 00:16:55,800 --> 00:16:59,850 And care is some sort of a lens of how they look at places. 155 00:17:00,300 --> 00:17:07,650 But since they are changing their place of residence, there might be a different type of emptiness that emerges. 156 00:17:07,650 --> 00:17:11,490 Is that a lack of a meaning, lack of attachment, lack of integration? 157 00:17:11,850 --> 00:17:16,049 And for them they can be in a place full of things, full of people, events. 158 00:17:16,050 --> 00:17:22,380 But if they are, I guess they can't integrate and they would still feel emptiness inside. 159 00:17:22,830 --> 00:17:29,850 So this is like one of the answer to that. But one the other answer emerges from my own field side. 160 00:17:30,240 --> 00:17:35,520 Strikingly, the the recent war between Russia and Ukraine has brought fullness to Armenia, 161 00:17:37,290 --> 00:17:41,250 which has been actually losing population at a very fast pace. 162 00:17:42,180 --> 00:17:44,969 The capital, for example, has been changing rapidly. 163 00:17:44,970 --> 00:17:52,260 There is an enormous Slavic population now in the capital of Armenia, but not only in the capital, but even my field site, 164 00:17:52,260 --> 00:17:59,330 which is 1000 people in the middle of mountains, basically in the middle of nowhere, there is a community of Slav. 165 00:18:00,090 --> 00:18:04,990 There is political migrants. They are refugees. There are even expats. 166 00:18:05,010 --> 00:18:14,760 I'm just going to a how they call themselves. And there is a community of about 50 people there now who are inhabiting a vacant factory. 167 00:18:15,090 --> 00:18:21,149 So there's another spectrum. So in the country of destination, they found emptiness. 168 00:18:21,150 --> 00:18:26,940 They found a place which people they are residents of that place actually say that there's nothing there. 169 00:18:27,390 --> 00:18:31,020 But now there is something I mean, there was always something. 170 00:18:31,020 --> 00:18:35,790 There was the residence, there was two shops, there was a post office, there was a museum. 171 00:18:36,000 --> 00:18:40,680 And now there's this community of Slavic people who are doing something. 172 00:18:40,690 --> 00:18:47,120 There is some creative activity. Most is creative, so they are doing some sort of their creative things. 173 00:18:47,130 --> 00:18:52,860 And when they come to the countries of destination, they not only come to capitals, 174 00:18:52,860 --> 00:18:57,239 but sometimes they land into places or with their own residency that there is 175 00:18:57,240 --> 00:19:00,630 nothing there and then they completely change the landscape or what is going on. 176 00:19:01,230 --> 00:19:08,010 It doesn't mean that they feel this emptiness, because I think that for the residents, this place is still empty. 177 00:19:08,040 --> 00:19:09,870 They still say that there's nothing there, 178 00:19:10,050 --> 00:19:19,200 but they create a new layer of relations and a new layer of interactions that somehow changes the social landscape. 179 00:19:19,470 --> 00:19:23,840 But this is a very, very, very something work in progress. 180 00:19:23,850 --> 00:19:28,440 It's been going on for one year since since the beginning of the war. 181 00:19:28,440 --> 00:19:33,540 And so the consequences of this in migration to a place to empty in place of a 182 00:19:33,540 --> 00:19:37,500 completely different population with completely different values and types of lives. 183 00:19:38,340 --> 00:19:41,940 It's still hard to grasp like what is actually going to change. 184 00:19:42,540 --> 00:19:48,239 But that's fascinating. I'm just I mean, just as an aside, I mean, you're you're describing a Slavic population now. 185 00:19:48,240 --> 00:19:53,400 I'm just interested, is this primarily Ukrainian population or a Russian population or a mix of the two or. 186 00:19:53,760 --> 00:19:59,040 Yeah, there is some Belarusians, but actually let's not forget about that part of slow population. 187 00:19:59,040 --> 00:20:02,729 But so I would say that mostly these are Russians, 188 00:20:02,730 --> 00:20:09,480 but then there also are some Ukrainians there and several Belarusians and also 189 00:20:09,690 --> 00:20:14,399 several Iranian people who are also escaping the violence of their estates. 190 00:20:14,400 --> 00:20:22,920 So it's it's an open ended creative community, but mostly I would say like over over 50% is Russians. 191 00:20:23,820 --> 00:20:33,150 Though it seems self-evident, the change from fullness to emptiness will will affect places and change places and people. 192 00:20:34,080 --> 00:20:40,440 Obviously, I imagine that that's inevitable. But is it always I mean, I was going to say, is it always for the worse? 193 00:20:40,470 --> 00:20:52,660 Is that change always for the worse? As Maria was already said, these are relational terms and they don't exist on their own individually. 194 00:20:53,320 --> 00:20:55,330 We start as as anthropologists. 195 00:20:55,330 --> 00:21:04,840 We start from the point of view of our research participants and the people who experience their places are empty or emptying. 196 00:21:07,120 --> 00:21:12,129 They do it because they remember them being cool or vibrant at some point, 197 00:21:12,130 --> 00:21:20,710 or because they see other places as vibrant as full of opportunities for for them. 198 00:21:21,160 --> 00:21:32,050 And 30 years of post-Soviet economic transformation led to an increase in income and wealth, but also in spatial inequality. 199 00:21:33,070 --> 00:21:42,880 And this is this is a sort of microeconomic correlates to our to our topic of emptying places in Ukraine, 200 00:21:43,210 --> 00:21:47,860 in Russia, but also in Belarus, to the countries that are no more. 201 00:21:49,180 --> 00:21:54,730 The the dynamic dynamic is economic dynamism and growth, 202 00:21:55,240 --> 00:22:04,069 where with the existing mostly in the in 2000s are concentrated in the capital city and in Moscow and Russia, 203 00:22:04,070 --> 00:22:09,280 Russian in Kiev, in Ukraine, but also in the few economic centres. 204 00:22:09,280 --> 00:22:14,020 And this places vibrancy that attract people and capital. 205 00:22:15,880 --> 00:22:25,510 They exist at the expense of vast regions that have been stagnant or have been degenerating. 206 00:22:25,840 --> 00:22:32,540 That, Maria, you talked about people reassembling their identities in new places. 207 00:22:32,920 --> 00:22:38,170 Now, is that something that migrants have to do or the migrants rather have to do? 208 00:22:39,010 --> 00:22:46,510 Or is there a different form of this to specific to those who who are who are leaving or or who have experienced emptiness? 209 00:22:47,670 --> 00:22:51,090 Um, I can't say for I can generalise here. 210 00:22:51,100 --> 00:22:58,409 I can only I guess give some maybe examples and some base my knowledge on what I'm seeing in my field site. 211 00:22:58,410 --> 00:23:05,730 But I am remaining small and in place where the Slavic predawn Slavic migrant community. 212 00:23:08,400 --> 00:23:18,420 I would say that it's not the place or the or the local people that influence and influence them to reassemble their identity, 213 00:23:18,780 --> 00:23:20,940 but rather the conditions from which they fled. 214 00:23:21,960 --> 00:23:30,780 So most of these are either refugees or political immigrants, and so they're kind of really rethinking their life in various aspects. 215 00:23:31,800 --> 00:23:38,280 So they were both categories were displaced in some violently, others less violently. 216 00:23:39,930 --> 00:23:44,540 And now in a new place, they're kind of thinking of how to move forward, who they are. 217 00:23:44,550 --> 00:23:50,340 They're experiencing very, very stark existential crises. 218 00:23:50,790 --> 00:23:59,850 This is what I can see. So I can't say for all migrants, but I can definitely say it depends on what are the conditions that they left behind. 219 00:24:00,390 --> 00:24:05,370 And in conditions of severe trauma, they definitely rethink their identity. 220 00:24:05,370 --> 00:24:09,959 And this might not be even related to to where they are lending. 221 00:24:09,960 --> 00:24:13,590 This is like a very internal process of rethinking how to move forward. 222 00:24:14,650 --> 00:24:23,950 Finally, I was hoping that I could just talk to you a little bit about the idea of the relationship, rather, between between conflict and emptiness. 223 00:24:23,980 --> 00:24:33,230 Now, I mean, we spoke in our very first podcast to you just at the very beginning of the of the of the invasion of Ukraine about this a little bit. 224 00:24:33,370 --> 00:24:38,680 But I wonder if you could just elaborate a little bit on what you think that relationship is and how we should analyse it. 225 00:24:39,800 --> 00:24:44,350 Since then, obviously quite a bit of work has been done on this. 226 00:24:45,580 --> 00:24:51,220 There have been numerous projects and journalists working on documenting, 227 00:24:51,610 --> 00:25:04,180 documenting the effects of the war on frontline communities and in places that have been affected by by bombings and by shelling. 228 00:25:05,380 --> 00:25:18,820 Now we have an added layer. We have the environmental emergency that obviously affecting different the places around the frontline in Ukraine, 229 00:25:19,630 --> 00:25:31,750 not only the with the destruction of Cahokia Dam and the destruction of kilometres and kilometres of territories down there on the flow of the river, 230 00:25:31,750 --> 00:25:38,860 but also pollution of the land with with explosives, the inability to cultivate the land near the frontline. 231 00:25:38,870 --> 00:25:47,979 In effect, if one looks at the current space maps of of the south and east of Ukraine, 232 00:25:47,980 --> 00:25:54,850 one can see from space how the frontline affects surrounding areas, 233 00:25:55,240 --> 00:26:07,270 creating spaces that have been on cultivating, creating belts of completely destroyed settlements that have simply disappeared. 234 00:26:07,540 --> 00:26:16,780 So the land that have been evacuated with few remaining residents, these are the most vital, the most urgent, 235 00:26:17,200 --> 00:26:26,500 the most urgent questions that one should focus on in the interdisciplinary studying of the war. 236 00:26:26,650 --> 00:26:33,969 About this, The second aspect and to it will become crucial is this study of migration, 237 00:26:33,970 --> 00:26:41,140 because this has been a truly unprecedented migration in the recent European history. 238 00:26:41,300 --> 00:26:52,360 It includes, of course, millions over five millions of Ukrainian refugees that fled to Europe and uh, but also to Russia. 239 00:26:52,720 --> 00:26:59,650 But it also should include systematic treatment of this wave of migration that include obviously 240 00:27:00,040 --> 00:27:05,619 the Russian citizens that are escaping from political persecution of Belarussian citizens, 241 00:27:05,620 --> 00:27:11,290 but also those who are caught in cutting between those who live in Ukraine without 242 00:27:11,290 --> 00:27:18,280 Ukrainian residence permit and or those who use this route through Belarus, 243 00:27:18,790 --> 00:27:26,440 from from the Middle East, from Afghanistan and Africa, and who are caught in this kind of geopolitical struggle on the border. 244 00:27:27,640 --> 00:27:36,459 The migration obviously contributes to the emptying and the population of the countries migrants come from, 245 00:27:36,460 --> 00:27:47,920 but they also need to be studied in the new places, because by now I think it's evident that the war will not end soon. 246 00:27:48,880 --> 00:27:53,620 And meanwhile this people these people who ended up in Europe for Europe, for example. 247 00:27:53,770 --> 00:28:01,540 They are caught in a specific kind of temporal, temporal conundrum. 248 00:28:01,550 --> 00:28:06,730 They are given temporary protection without knowing exactly what is going to expire. 249 00:28:07,090 --> 00:28:14,890 So it means that they should be potentially ready to to leave to to return at any moment in time. 250 00:28:15,580 --> 00:28:25,030 And given that the war is fundamentally uncertain, it's uncertain not only for for the refugees themselves, but also for the Ukrainian government. 251 00:28:25,960 --> 00:28:38,740 They can't they can't plan anything. And this is this is something that that breaks down completely their idea about the future and 252 00:28:39,040 --> 00:28:48,669 that destroys that destroys their identity as not not only like identity as a national term, 253 00:28:48,670 --> 00:28:57,400 but identities as as as in terms of gender, in terms of family, in terms of social status. 254 00:28:57,970 --> 00:29:03,730 And that that's that's a huge that's a huge chunk of work that's that's ahead of us. 255 00:29:04,630 --> 00:29:09,880 Well, I have to say, Maria, and so to me, this has been an absolutely fascinating conversation. 256 00:29:10,780 --> 00:29:12,970 I'm enormously grateful to you both. 257 00:29:13,360 --> 00:29:19,630 So I think that unless there's anything else, I'm going to say, thank you and hopefully we'll speak to you both again soon. 258 00:29:19,810 --> 00:29:24,160 Thank you. Thank you. You've been listening to the Migration Oxford podcast. 259 00:29:24,190 --> 00:29:26,310 I'm Robert Neill. And I'm Jackie Broadhead.