Linguistic Choices as Political Participation: The Political Voice of Ukrainian Refugee and Migrant Mothers

While political participation today manifests in many new, creative, and individualized forms, the contextual drivers and implications of lifestyle politics remain underexplored. This paper offers a comprehensive framework for the study of lifestyle politics, and examines deeply intimate private-life decisions that acquire political meaning during times of conflict. It leverages 18 unique in-depth interviews with Ukrainian refugee and migrant mothers in Denmark to investigate the political nature of linguistic choices, particularly the shift from Russian to Ukrainian after the invasion. Findings show that choosing to speak Ukrainian over Russian and avoiding Russian-language cultural products demonstrates solidarity and protest. Mothers’ policing of language and popular culture at home illustrates how language politicization blurs the line between private and public life and facilitates intergenerational transmission of lifestyle politics. These findings reveal the pervasiveness of and overlooked barriers and sacrifices to this form of political participation, offering insights that are relevant beyond the Ukrainian context.