CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2024
| Author | Johansen, Lane |
|---|---|
| Title | "I'm Russian, but I'm a Volunteer": Self-Image and Collective Identity Among Anti-war Russian Volunteers |
| Summary | This thesis investigates the impact that a newly-acquired, meaningful stigma related to one’s national group has on their self-image and collective identity. I focus specifically on anti-war Russians who volunteer to assist refugees from Ukraine, taking the NGO Russians for Ukraine (RFU) in Poland as my case study. Through qualitative content analysis of narrative interviews and participant observation, I find that all of the volunteers perceived a stigma toward Russians from a generalized “Other” but that these individuals draw on various cognitive and behavioral strategies to maintain a positive social identity; these strategies correspond with levels of identification with the category “Russian” and personal encounters with prejudice. This research demonstrates that highly identified individuals seek to reconstruct their collective identity in relation to a narrower subsection of their national group, and volunteering is a key strategy for seeking positive distinctiveness for this group. On the other hand, low identification is found to be correlated with efforts to deconstruct national identity as a defining aspect of social identity, and volunteering allows these individuals to seek positive personal distinctiveness. Nevertheless, nationality is found to exhibit an enduring influence on self-image and collective identity, illustrated by inconsistent attitudes toward national identity among those seeking to reject its importance. |
| Supervisor | Mijić, Ana |
| Department | Nationalism Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2024/johansen_lane.pdf |
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