“It's My Luggage That I Can’t Drop”: Russian Women Negotiating Belonging in the Changing Norwegian Borderland

Immigrants from Russia to Norway shape their sense of belonging through borders constructed at the intersection of geopolitics, social relations, and everyday practicalities. This article presents the lived experiences and changing sense of belonging of three Russian women, inhabitants of the Norwegian border town of Kirkenes, in the changing geopolitical context six months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. A narrative analysis was conducted of semi-structured interview data. The analytical approach draws on feminist scholarship in transnational migration, belonging, and border studies to explore the practical and emotional dimensions of transnationality among Russian women living at the Norwegian border and how these shape their sense of belonging. The findings reveal that belonging is not a binary oscillation between host and home countries, but a multipolar negotiation across multiple scales—local, regional, professional, familial, and geopolitical. The analysis is organized chronologically around two key periods: before and after 2020, tracing how a latent border re-emerged and hardened with the Covid-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. We show how geopolitical rupture reconfigures the salience of different attachments, forcing women to contend with involuntary nationalization, stigma, and shifting moral borders. The article contributes to borderland belonging theory by demonstrating that borders are not only geopolitical lines but embodied, affective phenomena, and that belonging emerges at the intersection of conjunctural events and personal biography.