CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2025
| Author | Copeland, Cortney |
|---|---|
| Title | Lyubit Ukrayinu! Love Ukraine! Why Americans who Sojourned in Ukraine are Committed to its Nationhood |
| Summary | This thesis is a qualitative study about why and how people support a nation other than their own. Specifically, it explores the motivations of Americans who make sustained personal efforts to support Ukraine against Russia’s full-scale invasion, with particular attention to the impact of prior sojourn in Ukraine, and how attachments developed during sojourn shape and are shaped by the pain and trauma of war. Such examination of transnational attachments has rarely been applied to sojourners beyond questions of individual identity, and sojourners have rarely been considered in studies of transnational involvement in nation-building or conflict. This study begins to address that gap. Through interviews with fifteen Americans who spent time in Ukraine as international development volunteers, and a comparison group of three Americans with no prior sojourn, this study takes a relational-processual approach to examine how connectedness and belonging emerge between people and nation and intensify in response to trauma. Findings indicate that sojourning can cultivate lasting transnational connectedness, and that relational setting is important to this process. Close social ties and community-focused work in the nation-building environment of newly independent Ukraine generated connectedness with Ukraine that is noted among former sojourners, but not other American supporters. It has made Russia’s invasion feel personal and immediate for many, and driven processes of collective action that are readily facilitated by sojourn-influenced mobilizing structures and practices. Through such action, returned sojourners and other Americans alike seek not only to ease suffering, but to support Ukraine’s sovereign nationhood. |
| Supervisor | Varadi, Luca |
| Department | Nationalism Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2025/copeland_cortney.pdf |
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