Mobilizing diaspora during crisis: Ukrainian diaspora in Canada and the intergenerational sweet spot

Abstract

Canada’s Ukrainian diaspora occupy an enviable, if not rare, ‘intergenerational sweet spot’. This sweet spot endows them with a high degree of positionality within Canada, enabling both long and short-term support for Ukraine since the crisis began in 2014. In examining Ukrainian diaspora positionality in the Canadian context, we find there are varied strategies that help offset hardship at the community and household level while addressing the long-term fragility of the country. While new migrants and temporary workers are actively remitting back home, older generation diaspora members compensate for smaller remittance volumes by lobbying and by influencing the state apparatus through various forms of political and social activism. This has the effect of shifting the costs borne by individuals to the host state and is consistent with our insights on principal-agent relations between states and diaspora. Although Ukraine’s macroeconomic performance will remain fragile for the foreseeable future, we identify four complementary forms of diaspora engagement in times of crisis, namely the mobilization of aid, political activism and volunteering, remittances and other financial flows, and delegating responsibilities to host-country institutions.