Just Like Us? “Sameing” Ukrainian Refugee Migration

Abstract Since the beginning of the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, critics have denounced the alleged preferential treatment of Ukrainians over non-European refugees as “just like us.” Against the backdrop of a long history of “ambiguous racialization” of Eastern Europeans, this article contends that the treatment of Ukrainian refugees as “equal” was not self-evident and required active “sameing”—a notion this article introduces as an antonym to the concept of “othering.” Examining the reporting of select German media outlets during the first 2 months of the full-scale invasion, the article argues that sameness was produced through the ascription of a middle-class identity to Ukrainian refugees (countering narratives of East European “poverty migration”) and the invocation of shared experiences of (historical) victimhood. It identifies strategies and tropes producing sameness: a framing of the refugee crisis as manageable; the representation of refugees as individuals with a name and a face; a focus on relatable everyday objects, especially their pets; special attention to their agency and self-reliance; and the identification of German and Ukrainian experiences in history and present, with the Russian enemy as a common denominator. Applying the concept of “racial triangulation,” the article also shows that the sameing of Ukrainians could be achieved through the othering of refugees from the 2015 cohort, while on other occasions the latter were included in the community of likeness against the Russian “other.” Finally, the article argues that the discursive equality of Ukrainians remains precarious, as competing narratives of East European “poverty migration” remain available.