Thinking Beyond the Centuries of Neglect: Diaspora and Democratic Processes in the Context of Ukraine

The collection of papers in this section aims to overcome the territorial bias that shapes democratic thinking and underpins diaspora scholarship (particularly diaspora engagement with democratic processes and its potential and contribution to democratic change) and to propose a deterritorial vision of both these elements. Having the Ukrainian case study at its centre, this section asks how the modern perspective of dispersal offers a useful way to conceptualise diaspora, while examining how the modern diaspora activity enables diasporas to influence the processes of democratisation and high skilled migrants to impact democratic processes in their homeland. In this section we seek to probe how various actors and groups, located across territorial space, can affect political systems and, more specifically, influence democratic processes. In that sense, this section is driven by a post-territorial vision of politics and democratisation processes that privilege networks of affiliation and organising, rather than geographically-bound political movements. It focuses on the nexus between one form of displacement, diaspora, and a particular political system, democracy, to provide insights into how the former might impact democratic processes. Specifically, this section explores that nexus principally in relation to the role of the multifaceted Ukrainian diaspora and their efforts to get involved in the democratic processes and democracy building in contemporary Ukraine.