Emotions, War, and Political Action in Exile: Gendered Patterns of Mobilization among Migrants from Authoritarian Regime
Fri 15 May
|Room TBD, Building 19, Waseda University
Examining Russians who left after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, this lecture shows how displacement and moral emotions transform political behavior, leading to a reversal of the typical gender gap in participation.
Date and Venue
15 May 2026, 17:00 – 19:00 GMT+9
Room TBD, Building 19, Waseda University, Japan, 〒169-0051 Tokyo, Shinjuku City, Nishiwaseda, 1-chōme−21−１ 早稲田大学 西早稲田ビルディング
About the Event
Abstract:
When states go to war, ordinary people are forced to make extraordinary choices — stay and comply, or leave and act. This lecture examines what happens to political engagement when people flee authoritarian regimes, asking how displacement, moral war-induced emotion, and crisis intersect to reshape who participates in politics, and how.
Drawing on the case of Russians who emigrated after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the talk presents a striking empirical finding: among post-2022 Russian emigrants, women consistently show higher levels of political engagement than men — a reversal of the gender gap typically observed in political participation research. This pattern, documented through original survey and interview data from the OutRush project, is particularly pronounced in digital anti-war activism, donations to independent Russian media and NGOs, and support for Ukrainian refugees.
The lecture argues that this reversal cannot be explained by conventional models of political behavior.…