Russian Jews on Three Continents by Larissa Remennick

Author:Larissa Remennick [Remennick, Larissa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General, Jewish Studies
ISBN: 9781351492256
Google: YEMrDwAAQBAJ
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 14906564
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2006-01-05T00:00:00+00:00

Crossing the Bridge: Cultural Continuity and Americanization

Educated immigrants usually ascribe a high value to the possibility to practice their pre-migration professions in the new country. Skilled workplace is their main gateway to successful integration: at work, the newcomers can meet their local social peers, improve their command of the new language, perfect their professional skills, and receive decent remuneration to establish a new economic foothold. Yet, immigration is often accompanied by occupational downgrading, which for some (younger and more dynamic ones) may be temporary, while for many others proves to be permanent. Former Soviet immigrants of the 1990s in the major American cities with a large immigrant presence faced tough competition for skilled jobs, and many had to put up with manual or semi-skilled work unrelated to their training or expertise in order to make a living. One occupational group that experienced almost universal upward mobility in the U.S. economy embraces a variety of younger engineering, IT, and other high-tech professionals as well as advanced research scientists, who have been in high demand during the technology boom of the 1990s. Yet, many older engineering and scientific workers could not fit into this niche due to their poor English or a mismatch between their skills and the demands of the local industry. Immigrants with culturally and linguistically embedded professions in humanities, education, and culture (mostly women) also had to change occupational tracks. Unable to fit into the mainstream U.S. economy, many former professionals ventured into the unknown terrain of entrepreneurship. Soviet immigrants in large U.S. cities are typified by high rates of self-employment, reaching fully 33 percent for men in Los Angeles and 21 percent in New York (for women the respective rates are lower but still impressive: 17 percent and 8 percent [Gold, 1997]). However, the majority of Russian small businesses in catering, food sales, real estate, car dealerships, beauty salons, music and language lessons, etc. cater to the co-ethnic community and are not really conducive for acculturation in the American mainstream. Some converts to the small business world may be really content, having fulfilled their American dream of independence and relative economic security, while others may still mourn their lost professional identity. A few studies that looked into the psychosocial implications of occupational downgrading of Soviet immigrants in the U.S. (Vinokurov et al., 2000; Aroian et al., 2003) have shown that lower work status is related to poorer mental health outcomes (depression being the most common one), slower improvement of the English skills, and more negative general attitudes towards the host society.

Cultural shock is another common corollary of resettlement, especially for older migrants and those who had never traveled abroad before coming to the U.S. One bitter discovery most educated Russian immigrants made in America was the irrelevance of their old cultural capital in the new life. For members of Soviet intelligentsia, their cultural baggage—the books they had read, great Russian poetry they knew by heart since youth, the world of museums, thick literary almanacs, and intelligent conversations with kindred friends—was at the core of their self-concept and self-esteem in their old lives.

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