Orlando’s Ukrainian diaspora providing a lifeline for refugees
Recently, we marked the anniversary of Russia escalating the Russo-Ukrainian War. In the year since, there has been nonstop media coverage of the resulting destruction of Ukraine. This invasion precipitated Europe’s largest refugee crisis since World War II, with eight million Ukrainian refugees forced to flee their homes and seek asylum in other countries.
In 2022, the U.S. welcomed 271,000 of these refugees through President Joe Biden’s “Uniting for Ukraine” sponsorship program, in which American citizens voluntarily provide Ukrainian refugee families with financial support for their first two years living in the U.S. Of all U.S. states, Florida had the fifth-largest number of applicants — 8,300 — to this program. It only ranked behind liberal states with large populations and a history of immigration, such as New York and California.
Participating in this program is a sacrifice given that it costs $15,000 to settle a refugee. So why were Floridians moved to help Ukrainians? The power of diaspora.
Diaspora is the dispersion of people from an ethnic group living outside their homeland. People who consider themselves part of a diaspora feel a deep connection to their cultural heritage because it is symbol of identity for those who migrate and their descendants. This identity is rooted in shared history, language, and religion. Furthermore, many people who are part of a diaspora have family members and friends who still live in their ancestral homeland. These connections are maintained through communication, visits, and monetary remittances — “sending money home.”
Involvement in a diaspora soothes feelings of displacement and loss — especially if individuals or their ancestors were forced to leave their homeland due to conflict or persecution — and preserves cultural traditions in future generations. This is true for the 59,000 Ukrainian-identifying Americans living in Florida, with Orlando hosting a particularly tight-knit Ukrainian diaspora.
Since the start of the Russo-Ukrainian war in 2014, the Ukrainian-American Community Center (UACC) has mobilized Orlando’s Ukrainian diaspora to support those fleeing the unrest. Members provide a range of services to Ukrainian refugees, including legal assistance and translators. Additionally, the UACC works with local businesses to provide job opportunities to refugees.
Several Ukrainian churches also have a critical role assisting Ukrainian refugees in Orlando.
St. Andrew’s Catholic Church, for example, offers them financial assistance from fundraisers, food, clothing and mental-health counseling.
Both the UACC and these churches — key locations of cultural pride — have successfully fostered a sense of belonging and memory of displacement in Orlando’s Ukrainian diaspora. This combination has created the intergenerational empathy driving this group to rally around Ukrainian refugees arriving in their city.
Why might a diaspora feel a heightened moral imperative to help other members of the diaspora instead of “fellow” homeless or sick Americans? In a globalized world — one instantaneously connected by social media — with fluid and mercurial migratory patterns, the bonds of diaspora may be stronger than the borders of the nation-state.
At the 2004 Democratic National Convention, former President Obama declared, “There is not a Black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America.” Politicians promoting a universalist discourse — the idea that national identity comes before all other identities — is not new. But this discourse is undercut by, for example, the explosive popularity of diaspora-discovering genetic testing service 23andMe or people four generations removed from immigrant ancestors still calling themselves Irish or Italian-Americans.
Political scientist Benedict Anderson defined the nation-state in 1983 as “an imagined political community” in which members “will never know most of their fellow-members … yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion … regardless of the actual inequality.” Four decades later, the increasing power and relevance of transnational diasporic identities are fracturing this imagination.
Americans hear the refrain, “charity begins at home!” when encouraged to donate to veterans’ associations or volunteer at the polls. But for Orlando’s Ukrainian diaspora, home is a people, not a place.