Chapter 5. From Russian motherland to German fatherland

Young Russian immigrants in Germany

Ludmila Isurin | The Ohio State University

Abstract

The chapter adopts the Acculturation Framework (Berry, 1980) to take a close look at a group of young Russian immigrants (n = 15) who came to Germany in their mid-to-late teens or early 20s and have been in the country for 10–15 years. They are fluent in German, consider themselves professionally successful, and might be expected to be well integrated into German society. Moreover, the group is divided into two subgroups: young Jewish immigrants who were brought to the country by their parents and ethnic Russian immigrants who made an independent decision and came to Germany alone in order to pursue education. By combining themes, such as identity negotiation, attitude to language maintenance, and sense of belonging, the chapter aims at preserving the integrity and complexity of each theme while showing the intertwined nature of all these factors that ultimately contribute to the immigrant’s sense of comfort in the new Fatherland.1

Keywords: integration, cultural adaptation, young immigrants, identity, language maintenance

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