CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2026
| Author | Dziadyk, Natalia |
|---|---|
| Title | The Voices of Displacement: War-Driven Activism and the Remaking of Political Life by Displaced People from Ukraine in Prague |
| Summary | This PhD thesis examines the political activism of people from Ukraine in Prague who were displaced by Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022 – their political acts, agency, and struggles. It explores what it means to engage in politics as a person displaced by war, how displacement generates political subjectivities, and how displaced Ukrainians navigate new relational and political landscapes through their activism. The analysis builds on nearly a year of ethnographic fieldwork with Hlas Ukrajiny (Voice of Ukraine) – an initiative founded in Prague in the summer of 2022 by young displaced women – as well as with local Czech activists working alongside them in solidarity. Through this focus, the thesis shows how displacement can be generative of new forms of political subjectivity and how activism in displacement reshapes understandings of citizenship, connecting it both to the war and moral-political obligations toward the home state, as well as to the challenges of emplacement and political visibility in the receiving society. As a cumulative dissertation, the thesis contributes not only to knowledge on war-driven displacement from Ukraine after 2022 but also to broader theoretical debates in forced migration and citizenship studies, alongside literature on migrant political struggles, solidarity, and the politicisation of migration. The first article provides an in-depth empirical account of Hlas Ukrajiny’s activism and conceptualises displaced citizenship as a dual process: enacting Ukrainian citizenship through war-driven advocacy and negotiating emerging roles as political actors within Czech society. By foregrounding the uncertainty and temporariness of protection granted to displaced Ukrainians, the urgency of the homeland’s struggle, and the moral obligations felt in exile, it shows how displacement itself becomes constitutive of political subjectivities. The second article situates these dynamics within broader Czech and European migration politics by examining Prague as a battleground of migration, highlighting mobilisation and counter-mobilisation over displaced persons’ (political) presence and rights amid wider struggles to frame and respond to the (poly)crisis. The final article shifts attention to the political transformations that Hlas Ukrajiny’s activism brings about. It explores how displaced persons’ political subjectivities are reconfigured through relations of solidarity, transforming the activists from claimants of rights to Czech society (and its institutions) into actors asserting rights within Czech society. Taken together, the three articles demonstrate how displacement, far from being only a condition of loss and vulnerability, becomes generative of new ways and modes of being political, redefining citizenship, belonging, and solidarity in the context of war and (poly)crisis. |
| Supervisor | Zentai, Violetta |
| Department | Political Science PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2026/dziadyk_natalia.pdf |
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