Olga Oleinikova - Life Strategies of Migrants from Crisis Regimes: Achiever or Survivor?

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More than any other work I have written, this book is driven by my personal experience of being a migrant and genuine interest in life strategies, which influenced my decision to research the life patterns of Ukrainian migrants to Australia. While the words (except those quoted) are mine, and I have spent four years researching, writing and revising it, the ideas, structure and progress of this book have been developed with the help of many people, some of whom have generously given the project a great deal of their time and energy. Without their help this book would not have materialised.

Foremost, I thank Catriona Elder (University of Sydney) for her encouragement and thoughtful guidance in this intellectual and challenging journey. She knew how to help me shape my analytical capabilities, critical thinking and ability to express my ideas in academic language. I am particularly grateful for her showing tremendous patience with my struggles to become a better writer. I am thankful for her great humour and for nurturing my development.

I am also grateful to a number of scholars who read and commented on the drafts of various parts of this researchDeirdre Howard-Wagner and Salvatore Babones (University of Sydney). I owe a great debt to Olga Kutsenko (Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv) and Karen OReilly (Loughborough University) who examined this research as a thesis and offered valuable criticism and suggestions for turning it into a book. I am thankful to Robin Cohen (University of Oxford) for the time he took to exchange ideas about the modern migration trends inside and outside Europe.

My special gratitude goes to the institutions that supported this research work. Those are University of Sydney and the Ukrainian Studies Foundation in Australia (USFA) for generously financing all stages of the fieldwork, data collection, transcription and translation of data from Ukrainian and Russian languages into English, as well as for making it possible to travel inside Australia and internationally to present provisional research results. Also, I am humbly appreciative of the Sydney Democracy Network (SDN) which sponsored my fellowship visit to WZB Berlin Social Science Research Centre where I shaped much of the ideas behind this project, further inspiring the possibility of future research endeavours.

Part of this research was undertaken at the Department of Democracy and Democratization, WZB Berlin Social Science Research Centre. Wolfgang Merkel was always interested in discussing the latest developments in Ukraine and hearing about and reading my research. Exchange with many other colleagues at WZB also helped me to better understand the crisis and regime transitions in Ukraine.

Irreversibly, my deepest debts are to those I interviewedto all the Ukrainians in Australia who were willing to reveal their happiest and saddest stories, which ultimately brought life to the critical threads of this book.

Endearingly, I thank my family and loved ones for their uncompromising belief in me and my work. My husband, Kyrylo Medvediev, deserves a special acknowledgement for being a genuine love, unrelenting understanding during the ups and downs of writing a book and unconditional support. My parents, Ira Oleinikova and Andrew Oleinikov, for suffering the distance when I was in Sydney researching and collecting datayou both deserve ultimate recognition for your love, support and inspiration; my grandparents Alevtina Oleinikova, Borys Oleinikov and Volodymyr Kaidash, for their early vital lessons and sacrifices that led me to embark on the academic journey. Having had a family by my side gave meaning to these years beyond research. I am grateful for their passion and belief, as without them I could never have achieved what they always told me I could.