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Identity, Intimidation, or Ideology?: A Case Study of the Motivations of Swedish Voluntary Soldiers in Ukraine
Malmö University, Faculty of Culture and Society (KS), Department of Global Political Studies (GPS).
2023 (English)Independent thesis Basic level (degree of Bachelor), 12 HE creditsStudent thesis
Abstract [en]

Foreign fighters are a well-studied group in several areas of research connected to Peace and Conflict studies. However, Swedish voluntary fighters in Ukraine are a fairly new part of the foreign fighter phenomenon whose motivations have yet not been studied. This qualitative case study explores the motivations of foreign fighters through the case of Swedish voluntary fighters who went to Ukraine after the Russian invasion 2022, through a social identity perspective. The dataset consists of on the one hand primary material as interviews conducted with six Swedish fighters, and on the other hand secondary visual and audio material where several other Swedish fighters describe their motivations. The analytical framework is based on a model established by Ross Frenett and Tanya Silverman, investigating motivations connected to identity and meaning, emotional triggers, and ideas and values through a social identity theory perspective. A directed content analysis was applied in the analysis, showing a complex mix of emotional triggers and meaning- making motivations connected to several social identities that were either already established and activated by or formed in the context of the war. Moreover, the result shows that the fighters generally were not ideologically or politically motivated, which differed from previous studies on the topic.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2023. , p. 60
Keywords [en]
Social identity theory, foreign fighters, Ukraine, Swedish voluntary soldiers, motivations
National Category
Other Social Sciences Social Psychology
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-60058OAI: oai:DiVA.org:mau-60058DiVA, id: diva2:1762950
Educational program
KS GPS Peace and Conflict Studies
Supervisors
Examiners
Available from: 2023-06-22 Created: 2023-06-05 Last updated: 2023-06-22Bibliographically approved

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Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
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Language
  • de-DE
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  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
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Output format
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  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf