Self-Identification as a Tool of (De-)Politicization

This article provides and discusses a typology of the self-identifications used by the post-2022 war-induced migrants from the Russian Federation, i.e., people who left Russia after it invaded Ukraine. We argue that this typology, which consists of three main elements—migrant/émigré (migrant/emigrant in Russian), refugee (bezhenets), and relocant (relokant)—is permeated by tensions between politicizing and depoliticizing one’s own migratory experience. We show that politicization dominated among those who self-identified as migrants/émigrés or refugees, while depoliticization dominated among relocants. In this way, we reveal the problem of politicality as central to how recent migrants from Russia shape their self-identifications, i.e., their ways of interpreting their migratory experiences as a whole. The article is based on the analysis of 110 semi-structured qualitative interviews with post-2022 migrants from Russia, conducted in nine European and Asian countries.