WOPE Seminar Series. “Our girls, in general, are powerful”: Social Initiatives and Entrepreneurship as Relational Empowerment of Women with Migration Experience in Poland
Published: 9 April 2026
15 April 2026. Dr Kseniya Homel, University of Warsaw
Dr Kseniya Homel, University of Warsaw
“Our girls, in general, are powerful”: Social Initiatives and Entrepreneurship as Relational Empowerment of Women with Migration Experience in Poland
Wednesday, 15 April. 15:15
Room 6124 ASBS
Abstract
This research explores the experiences and self-organisational practices of Ukrainian and Belarusian women in Poland as a relational process of both personal and collective empowerment. It provides a detailed overview of migrant women’s networking practices, support initiatives (including informal online groups and social organisations), and entrepreneurial trajectories (particularly micro-businesses in the beauty sector), based on collected empirical data. The study seeks to broaden the concept of women’s empowerment, as proposed by Naila Kabeer (1999), by incorporating the role of shifting transnational contexts. The empirical research takes into account the COVID-19 pandemic and the mass protests in Belarus following the 2020 presidential elections as key examples of transnational events that influenced women’s self-organising activities and the dynamic interplay between disempowerment and empowerment. The analysis is based on qualitative data collected through interviews, social media content analysis, participant observation, and secondary data analysis.
Bio
Kseniya Homel-Ficenes is a sociologist and an associate researcher at the Centre of Migration Research, University of Warsaw, and at the Institute of Social Prevention and Resocialization. Her research interests focus on migration dynamics, social inequalities, migrant self-organisation, and migration discourse. In 2025, she obtained her PhD in social sciences (sociology). Her doctoral research explored the self-organisation of Belarusian and Ukrainian women in Poland, focusing on examples of social initiatives and micro-entrepreneurship. She is a 2025-2026 Dekaban Liddle Fellow
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First published: 9 April 2026