Gendered and sexualized violence on the move: unravelling collective (im)mobilization in the name of post-Soviet imperial membership

Contemporary discourses of the Russian Federation reproduce images of militarized heterosexual masculinity and frame its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. This war encouraged the large-scale displacement and caused Ukrainian citizens’ horrible experiences of gendered and sexualized violence. Relying on the secondary data, the article studies these war-torn forms of gendered and sexualized violence as framed by the military coercion taking place in three different realms: in Ukraine, on the route to the Russian Federation, and on the route to the EU. First, the article introduces the imperiality-sensitive ideas with the goal to interpret the nexus of embodied violence and war-torn state-led (im)mobilization strategies as articulations of post-Soviet imperial membership. Second, it specifies the concept of politics and policies of (sociospatial) (im)mobilization to address the ways in which (state) actors coercively channel movement by relying on the carceral apparatus. Third, the article delineates Russian ethnic dominance, anti-Westernism, neo-Stalinist elements, and heteronormative-patriarchal organization as four dimensions of post-Soviet membership and relates them to RF’s war-related discourses, politics, and policies. The subsequent empirical section zooms into the forms of gendered and sexualized violence (in Ukraine, on the route to the Russian Federation and to the EU) as embodied practices of post-Soviet membership.

New mobilities, old vulnerabilities: European Far East and coloniality of Ukrainian gendered labor

The paper explores how the legal inclusion of Ukrainian citizens in the German labor market under the Temporary Protection Directive intertwines with their position of being marked by colonial differences. By introducing the concept of European Far East , we strive to grasp analytically the specific position of Ukraine within global racial capitalism. Drawing on the original empirical data and ongoing public debates, we unpack this particular position to demonstrate how, despite the special protection status granted by the EU, refugees from Ukraine become subject to the ‘migration industry’ and are often confined to the niche of low-skilled, low-paid labor. This perspective also allows us to see how the critical discourse of ‘VIP refugees’ is, a matter of fact, aimed not at dismantling the racializing structures of the migration industry and enabling a more universally shared European future, but at precarious war refugees from Ukraine, thus strengthening the racializing structures. Finally, this analytics reveals how, in the context of the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Far Eastern Europeans’ lives appear ‘cheap’ enough to be sacrificed for the sake of peace in the Western world.

Vulnerable (im)mobilities between imperial legacies and colonial logics of war

The article conceptualizes war-related mobilities and immobilities during Russia’s war against Ukraine as shaped by two interconnected dynamics: cross-border solidarity and entanglement between Ukraine and Europe, and cross-border disentanglement of both from Russia’s authoritarian political context. Building on mobility studies, the article argues that these frameworks gain analytical depth when combined with critical refugee and migration studies. The editorial proposes four key directions to expand mobility studies: (i) the notion of ‘entangled (im)mobilities’: highlighting temporal and spatial interdependencies between mobility and immobility in times of war; (ii) empire-sensitive approaches: treating post-Soviet spaces as postcolonial contexts shaped by imperial legacies; (iii) intersectional vulnerability: examining how vulnerability is produced through overlapping forms of marginalization; (iv) reflexive knowledge production: interrogating how war shapes epistemologies and research practices. Together, these perspectives enable a more nuanced understanding of war-induced (im)mobility dynamics, collective suffering, and selective immobilization. The article concludes with an overview of the contributions in the special issue.

Shakespeare Against War: Pacifist Readings by Robert White, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2024, viii + 293 pp., £95 (hardback), ISBN: 9781399516211

A coach in all but name: the games mistress in inter-war Britain

The historiography of coaching, written almost exclusively by men about men, has generated the impression that women have been completely absent from the field of sports coaching. However, recent research has uncovered their extensive involvement in a range of physical activities over the course of the last two hundred years. One significant outcome of these studies has been the recognition that most women never referred to themselves as ‘coach’, preferring instead to use self-descriptors such as ‘games mistress’, ‘teacher’, or ‘instructor’. This paper begins by considering the masculine cultural heritage that has created the contemporary issues faced by women in coaching before summarising recent academic contributions to women’s coaching history. The paper then builds on this work by employing a range of coaching related language to identify women who used these various terms in the 1920s and 1930s, including some who appeared within the 1939 Register, the only lens through which the majority of the British population can be extensively analysed between the 1921 and 1951 censuses. Particular attention is given to the women who transitioned from games mistress to physical education and training organisers and the paper concludes by reflecting on their lives and the impact that they made.

Vim and Vigour: branding beefcake and barbells in early muscle magazines

The World War II era coincided with an increased interest in weightlifting and bodybuilding and the appearance of a pair of muscle magazines in Columbus, Ohio, and London, England, headed respectively by Roger Eells and co-editors John Barrs and Henry Atkin. Vim (for vigour, intellect, and might), was devoted to instructive articles providing more detailed information than readers could obtain from other publications. Vigour was established on a more official footing as the organ of The British Amateur Weight Lifters’ Association. Although the editors favoured all vigorous sports, they believed weight-training was the best way to build better bodies and that weightlifting was the most suitable form of competition. Though short-lived, both magazines filled a gap in physical culture from the late 1930s to the early 1950s by their branding of beefcake and barbells. By their focus on nearly nude male bodies, they paved the way for the publication of Tomorrow’s Man and other physique publications that openly tapped a lucrative market catering to a growing homosexual clientele. Vim and Vigour thereby helped turn the corner for acceptance of modern bodybuilding by promoting muscular development but with a twist toward representing the body as an object of erotic desire.

Trudgen’s stroke: swimming, Indigenous South Americans, and cultural appropriation

Historians have paid scant attention to the origins of the trudgen stroke, a now obsolete but once prominent swimming stroke. The style is attributed to an Englishman, John Trudgen, whose inspiration is vaguely given as South America, Buenos Aires or South American Indians. This article explores Trudgen’s life and locates the most probable source of his style to indigenous Paraguayans, with whom Trudgen lived and worked as an engineering apprentice in the 1860s, prior to and during the War of the Triple Alliance, as part of an English contingent employed to arm the Paraguayan national forces. The imprecise attribution of Trudgen’s stroke and elision of South American swimming cultures in the historiography of the stroke constitute a form of cultural appropriation. Drawing from the work of Hochan Kim, this article analyses the mechanics of this process through specific actions that dismiss, obscure, denigrate and crowd out the South American antecedents that inspired Trudgen. It draws parallels to similar cultural appropriation that has occurred with other swimming stokes and calls for renewed attention to the existence of global indigenous swimming cultures and their contributions to modern sport.

Behind the Enemy News: issue salience in the Russo-Ukrainian War

Agenda-setting theory and warfare studies hold that setting the national agenda is strategically advantageous to foreign policy goals. We probe this theory on the Russo-Ukrainian War by analysing the conflicting agenda set by RIA Novosti, RT Russian, RT International, BBC News Russian, and BBC News from February 2022 to July 2023. In contrast to previous work that identified press coverage misalignment to be largely concentrated in the framing of events, our study provides evidence of substantive and sustained misalignment in the event selection by revealing that Russian state media tailored a specific version of the news for Russian-speaking audiences, often downplaying key developments of the conflict, such as the mobilization crisis in Russia, the Wagner group rebellion, the Ukrainian counteroffensive, and the prospect of nuclear escalation. Our results contribute to understanding how modern Russian propaganda has shaped the public perception of the invasion of Ukraine.

The politics of showing and not showing: Politicized media representations of war-affected children in the East and the West

Flying Under the Ethnic Radar: Subdued Identities of Serbs Amidst Croatian Statebuilding

Gorski Kotar, a region in north-west Croatia inhabited by Croats and Serbs, was largely spared the massive armed violence of the 1990s. This study argues that the maintenance of peace, which continues to this day, is largely due to a strategy of the local Serbs that can be described as ‘flying under the ethnic radar’. This means that they avoid displaying their ‘ethnic visibility’ too openly, which characterises the everyday life of local Serbs even in the post-war period. The study uses a variety of qualitative research methods: participant observation, in-depth interviews and the analysis of primary and secondary sources.