Cover not available
Part of
Integration, Identity and Language Maintenance in Young Immigrants: Russian Germans or German Russians
Edited by Ludmila Isurin and Claudia Maria Riehl
[IMPACT: Studies in Language, Culture and Society 44] 2017
► pp. 135–158

Chapter 5
From Russian motherland to German fatherland

Young Russian immigrants in Germany

| The Ohio State University

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.

Keywords: identity, language maintenance, integration, cultural adaptation, young immigrants
Article outline
  • 1.Conceptual background
  • 2.Present study
    • 2.1Methodology
      • 2.1.1Participants
      • 2.1.2Procedure
    • 2.2Results
      • 2.2.1Background differences: Motivational factors
      • 2.2.2Language maintenance
      • 2.2.3Identity negotiation
  • 3.Discussion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 12 April 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/impact.44.05isu
References
Andrews, D.
(1998) Sociocultural perspectives on language change in diaspora: Soviet immigrants in the United States. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Berry, J.
(1980) Acculturation as varieties of adaptation. In A. M. Padilla (Ed.), Acculturation: Theory, models and some new findings (pp. 9–25). Boulder, CO: Westview.Google Scholar
Brewer, M.
(1991) The social self: On being the same and different at the same time. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 24, 163–172.Google Scholar
Clément, R.
(1987) Second language proficiency and acculturation: An investigation of the effects of language status and individual characteristics. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 5, 271–290. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fase, W., Jaspaert, K., & Kroon, S.
(1992) Maintenance and loss of minority languages: Introductory remarks. In F. Williem, K. Jaspaert, & S. Kroon (Eds.), Maintenance and loss of minority languages (Studies in Bilingualism 1) (pp. 3–13). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Isurin, L.
(2011) Russian diaspora: Culture, identity and language change. Berlin: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2014) “They call us names, they call us Russians!” Nationality and conceptual non-equivalence. Slavic and East-European Journal, 58 (4), 663–685.Google Scholar
Kertzer, D., & Arel, D.
(2002) Census, identity formation, and the struggle for political power. In D. Kertzer & D. Arel (Eds.), Census and identity (pp. 1–42). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Klatter-Former, J., & Kroon, S.
(Eds.) (1997) Dutch overseas. Tilburg: Tilburg University Press.Google Scholar
Kurthen, H.
(1995) Germany at crossroads: National identity and challenges of immigration. International Migration Review, 29 (4), 914–938. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Marian, V., Blumenfeld, H., & Kaushanskaya, M.
(2007) The Language Experience and Proficiency Questionnaire (LEAP-Q): Assessing language profiles in bilinguals and multilinguals. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 50, 940–967. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Noels, K., Pon, G., & Clément, R.
(1996) Language, identity, and adjustment: The role of linguistic self-confidence in the acculturation process. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 15 (3), 246–264. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Padilla, A., & Perez, W.
(2003) Acculturation, social identity, and social cognition: A new perspective. Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Science, 25 (1), 35–55. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pan, Y., & Lubkemann, S.
(2013) Observing census enumeration of non-English speaking households in the 2010 Census: Evaluation report. Study Series: Survey Methodology # 2013–02. Washington, DC: Center for Survey Measurement Research and Methodology Directorate, US Census Bureau. [URL] (last accessed on November 10, 2014).
Pavlenko, A., & Blackledge, A.
(2004) Introduction: New theoretical approaches to the study of negotiation of identities in multilingual contexts. In A. Pavlenko & A. Blackledge (Eds.), Negotiation of identities in multilingual contexts (pp. 1–33). Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Pfetsch, B.
(1999) “In Russia we were Germans, and now we are Russians”. – Dilemmas of identity formation and communication among German-Russian Aussiedler. WZB Working paper. Berlin: Science Center for Social Research.Google Scholar
Redfield, R., Linton, R., & Herskovits, M.
(1936) Memorandum for the study of acculturation. American Anthropologist, 38, 149–152. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Remennick, L.
(2007) Russian Jews on three continents: Identity, integration, and conflict. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.Google Scholar
Rock, D., & Wolff, S.
(Eds.) (2002) Coming home to Germany? The integration of Ethnic Germans from Central and Eastern Europe in the Federal Republic. New York, NY: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
Schmid, M.
(2004) Language attrition research: An annotated bibliography. In M. Schmid, B. Kopke, M. Keijzer, & L. Weilemar (Eds.), First language attrition: Interdisciplinary perspectives on methodological issues (pp. 317–349). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Teske, R., & Nelson, B.
(1974) Acculturation and assimilation: A clarification. American Ethnologist, 17, 218–235.Google Scholar
Triandis, H.
(2001) Individualism and collectivism: Past, present, and future. In D. Matsumoto (Ed.), The handbook of culture and psychology (pp. 35–50). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar