East to West Migration by Helen Kopnina

Author:Helen Kopnina [Kopnina, Helen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Human Geography, Ethnic Studies, General
ISBN: 9781351942164
Google: -WSzDwAAQBAJ
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 8200304
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2005-11-01T00:00:00+00:00

4.3.3 How are Subcommunal Boundaries Drawn and Maintained?

Russian and mixed subcommunities represent something of a miniature model of the ‘communities’ as defined in the chapter on that topic. In the case of exclusive subcommunities, boundary maintenance may require intentional exaggeration of culture and ethnicity to assert a group’s values in contrast with those of the receiving society. As I shall argue in the chapters on culture and ethnicity, said characteristics are often reified and magnified in opposition to the host culture or as a reaction to external labelling. To counteract the danger of losing one’s cultural or ethnic identity, members of exclusive subcommunities tend to accentuate cultural differences while underplaying the similarities (Verkuyten, 1997: 114).7

Boundary maintenance also depends upon self-classification of members of subcommunities. In cognitive theories, every category presupposes the existence of ‘ideal types’ which are thought to be more representative of the category than less ‘typical’ members.8 ‘Ideal types’ in subcommunities possess a list of ‘typical’ characteristics while more marginal members possess only a few of the ‘representative’ characteristics of their subcommunity. As in the above example of the intelligentsia, a subcommunity whose members share a particular set of values and attributes would likely judge others on the basis of possession or lack of those characteristics. Some people may be perceived as more or less ‘intellectual’ according to the group’s standards. For example, those who study medicine and cannot talk about art and poetry might be categorized more as professionals or specialists rather than intellectuals. Similarly, a ‘Russian wife’ who has married to acquire foreign citizenship, and yet loves her husband, is not representative of the stereotypical ‘fictionally married Russian wife’ category. In the previously mentioned case of seven Russian women married to the British, only one was formally employed. She felt that, despite the expressed desire of others to find jobs, they thought of her as different. The employed woman felt that it was the ‘feeling of envy and the need to complain and be pitied’ that united six unemployed women, making them more ‘ideal’ for the group than her.

No matter how a medic or a Russian woman categorize themselves, they cannot help being labelled by the group they are in or want to be members of. Because they do not share all of the group’s values, this group may mistrust them. At the same time, they might be better fit to join another group (like other doctors or other loving spouses). This makes an art-ignorant doctor or loving arranged-marriage spouse into what I call ‘liminal members of subcommunities’. By virtue of their intercommunal positioning, these individuals are well suited for crossing subcommunal boundaries. Armen, an Armenian from Ukraine living in London, finds his ethnic liminality frustrating, while admitting that his ‘in-between’ positioning has helped him in business:

As an Armenian from Ukraine, I’m already what you might call displaced, and now I’m here, Armenian from Ukraine in the UK, so I’m even more displaced ... The funny thing is, neither the Armenians, nor the Ukrainians, nor the

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