Kyiv's Troeshchyna: An Emerging International Migrant Neighborhood

Abstract

Troeshchyna is a down-at-the-heels late Soviet moonscape that happens to be located on the fringe of Kyiv, though it is indistinguishable from hundreds of other socialist neighborhoods built in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s anywhere between Berlin and Beijing. This Brezhnev-era district has almost no distinguishing features other than the Ukrainian capital's most robust and scraggly markets. Walk by one of Troeshchyna's neighborhood elementary schools, such as School 247, and something looks not quite appropriate for this part of the world. The school's playground will be chock full of kids from countries and cultures not traditionally associated with the central Dniepr, including children from Afghanistan, Angola, Korea, Mongolia and Vietnam.