Hospitality on the borders of empire

Since 2022, initiatives to welcome Ukrainian war-displaced persons in Estonia and Latvia have highlighted the specific forms of solidarity developed in these two European Union member states. The fieldwork shows that their arrival unfolds within a social and material fabric shaped by both proximity and otherness, rooted in a painful past on the borders of the Russian Empire and the USSR. This history fosters mutual aid in response to aggression while also generating lingering anxieties.