Getting Out of the «Ghetto»: how Australian Ukrainians negotiated a diasporic identity

Abstract

This article deals with the history of the Ukrainian diasporic community in Australia, focusing on the movement for the defense of human rights and the creation of academic institutions dedicated to Ukrainian studies. The aim of the research is to verify the constitutive characteristics of a diasporic group that has to manage multiple planes of relationships with the original motherland, the new host country, and the other diasporic communities scattered around the globe. This article demonstrates that in Australia the feelings of belonging of diasporic subjects were formed in a multi-voiced dialogic process that included the internal relationships in the local diasporic community, those with the national community of the new country of residence and those with the rest of the Ukrainian emigration around the world. Following the lead of the most recent research on this topic, diasporic identities are defined as elastic, multilayered and transnational.