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Urban imaginaries of post-2022 Russian emigrants on Telegram: negotiating belonging and affective attachment in Yerevan, Buenos Aires, Herceg Novi, and Belgrade
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This study examines the digital narratives of Russian emigrants who left the country after 2022, focusing on how they construct urban imaginaries of their host cities on Telegram. Drawing on four publicly accessible Telegram channels (from their creation in 2022 through April 2026), it explores representations of Yerevan, Buenos Aires, Herceg Novi, and Belgrade. The corpus broadly reflects the sociological profile of the post-2022 emigration wave: urban, highly educated, and relatively affluent. Using narrative analysis, the study identifies recurring themes and rhetorical strategies through which emigrants make sense of their new environments. Particular attention is paid to everyday topics such as weather and seasonal rhythms, sensory impressions of urban space, gastronomy and food practices, encounters with host-community members, and the gradual cognitive mapping of the city. These brief, episodic sketches, addressed to online audiences, produce dynamic and evolving urban imaginaries that are neither fixed nor purely individual but co-constructed through circulation within diasporic digital networks. The findings show that these imaginaries emerge through an ongoing negotiation between emigrants and place. A key dimension of this process is affective: as narrators move beyond tourist perspectives and engage with the city’s everyday routines and less visible spaces, they develop forms of place attachment, articulated through the interchangeable use of “falling in love” with the city and “feeling at home.” Sensory familiarity, personal landmarks, and humorous encounters with locals all contribute to this transition from displacement to dwelling. While integration into local communities may remain limited, attachment to the urban environment becomes a crucial resource for reconfiguring belonging and constructing new, place-based identities. Urban imaginaries thus function as affective and symbolic tools for negotiating displacement and re-establishing agency.
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Urban imaginaries Belonging Home-making Personal topography Cities Emigrants Digital narratives Blogs Place attachment Sense of place