Contested Diasporization in Wartime: Illiberal Mobilization of Russian-Speaking Migrants in Germany

ABSTRACTThe study of migrant networks has led scholars to believe that political migrants, including refugees and asylum seekers, utilise social networks in similar ways to economic migrants. This assumption is based on empirical investigations of South–North migration in which the Western receiving context is held constant. I argue that the utility of social networks is influenced by the reason for displacement and regional geopolitical frameworks. Like economic migrants, political migrants believe that they would benefit from networks; however, some political migrants must exercise caution in the face of potentially harmful new relationships in receiving countries. These political migrants practise strategic anonymity to navigate social networks. This refers to proactive acts of withholding personal information to maintain security for oneself and one's family. I rely on 30 interviews conducted between 2009 and 2010 with Iraqi refugees in Jordan displaced after the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.

1. Acknowledgements 1. Acknowledgements 2. Introduction (by Isurin, Ludmila) 3. Chapter 1. Russian-Germans: Historical background, language varieties, and language use (by Riehl, Claudia Maria) 4. Chapter 2. Ethnic German and Jewish immigrants from post-Soviet countries in Germany: Identity formation and integration prospects (by Dietz, Barbara) 5. Chapter 3. Generation 1.5 of Russian-speaking immigrants in Israel and in Germany: An overview of recent research and a German pilot study (by Remennick, Larissa) 6. Chapter 4. When networks tell just half the story: Social networks, language and social identity among Russian German and Russian Jewish migrants in Germany (by Irwin, Vera) 7. Chapter 5. From Russian motherland to German fatherland: Young Russian immigrants in Germany (by Isurin, Ludmila) 8. Chapter 6. Young Russian-German adults 20 years after their repatriation to Germany (by Meng, Katharina) 9. Chapter 7. Language attitudes and linguistic skills in young heritage speakers of Russian in Germany (by Anstatt, Tanja) 10. Chapter 8. Lost in transmission?: Family language input and its role for the development of Russian as a heritage language in Germany (by Brehmer, Bernhard) 11. Conclusion. Integration, identity, and language maintenance in young immigrants: Future research directions (by Isurin, Ludmila) 12. Index

As recently as the late 1970s and 1980s, a broad consensus in both Israel and US Jewish communities asserted that Israel should be the primary destination for Jewish migrants. Hebrew terms like yordim (those who go down) and noshrim (dropouts) stigmatized “Jewish communal deviants” who chose to settle outside of Israel. Moreover, whether they established themselves in Tel Aviv or Los Angeles, Jewish migrants were expected to cooperate with the religious, economic, political, cultural, and national agendas created for them by their host communities. While migrants had their own preferences about resettlement, they had limited ability to act on them. However, by the mid-1990s, a series of political, economic, ideological and demographic developments had transformed the status and treatment of Jewish migrants. The United States had received hundreds of thousands of Jewish migrants, either in competition with, or from, Israel. The American Jewish community, in consort with migrant activists and Israel itself, extended an array of social, economic, and religious services to Jewish migrants. And in both Israel and the United States, migrant populations increasingly selected their own patterns of national, political, linguistic, cultural, and religious identity—conforming to the agendas of host communities only in ways that they themselves chose. The net effect of these recent transformations has been to greatly enhance the autonomy of Jewish migrants. In this, we see a movement away from nationally-bounded forms of Jewish identity within Israel, the United States and other settings, and their replacement with flexible and less geographically fixed forms of Jewish identification. This article draws on in-depth interviews with Jewish migrants and resettlement staff to discuss recent transformations among Jewish migrants in the United States. It reviews some of the causes of these changes and considers their impacts. It concludes that skilled Jewish migrants with access to multiple places and ways of settlement have a great deal to offer the American Jewish community, but also considerable freedom to decide how and where they will live. Such factors transform established understandings of American Jewish life and need to be considered by scholars and policy makers involved in Jewish population research.

BackgroundInadequate utilization of healthcare services by migrant populations is an important public health concern. Inadequate drug consumption and poor compliance to the therapeutic regimen are common manifestations of low health-care seeking behavior present in migrants even in the countries with well-established healthcare systems. There are few studies on the use of medicines among the different groups of migrants in Germany. The objective of this study is to investigate drug consumption patterns of ethnic German migrants (Aussiedler) and their current health status.MethodsA cross-sectional study nested into a cohort of 18,621 individuals aged 20-70 years who migrated to Germany from the former Soviet Union between 1990 and 2005 was conducted. Data on consumption of drugs, drug handling, major health risk factors, and one-year disease prevalence were obtained for 114 individuals through a self-administered questionnaire and phone interviews. Results were compared to the data on the German population derived from the Disease Analyzer database and Robert Koch Institute (RKI) annual reports. Direct age standardization, test of differences, Chi-square test, and descriptive statistics were applied as appropriate. For drug classification the Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical (ATC) system was used.ResultsOf the respondents, 97% reported to have at least one disease within a 12-month period. The one-year prevalence of asthma (6.9%), hypertension (26.7%), chronic bronchitis (8.6%), and diabetes (4.9%) in migrants was similar to the general German population. 51% regularly took either over-the-counter (OTC) medication or prescription medicines. Six ATC groups were analyzed. The highest drug consumption was reported for the ATC cardiovascular (22%), nervous (9%), and muskulo-skeletal system (8%). 30% used OTC medicines obtained in the country of origin. Difficulties with drug handling were rare. Alcohol consumption did not differ from the German population (p = 0.19 males and 0.27 females), however smoking prevalence was lower (p < 0.01) in both sexes.ConclusionEthnic German migrants seem to differ only slightly from Germans in health status, drug utilization, and disease risk factors, and if so, not in an extreme way. Country of origin remains a source of medicines for a substantial part of migrants. The study is limited by a small sample size and low response rate.

Hostels are synonymous with independent tourists and frequently identified as spaces of hospitality that enable a number of touristic performances to take place. These performances include resting, relaxation, destination or route planning, and interactions with other likeminded visitors. However, using Oslo, Norway as a research setting, we argue that such places may also permit a range of other performances to take place due to the increasing use of hostels as temporary and semi-permanent housing solutions for migrant populations. This alternative group of hostel users originated from a plethora of different countries and included economic and political migrants from Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Although hostel spaces provided comfort, safety, and platforms for friendships to prosper for non-tourist hostel users, they also served as settings for largely contrasting performances of immobility to take place. Thus, Oslo's hostels revealed a range of overlapping acts that resulted in a paradoxical ensemble of entangled tourist and non-tourist performances.

In this paper I will analyze economic and political migration in the Gora region at the end of the 20th and in the first decade of the 21st century. It is my intent to consider and explain their cause and their intensity and scope. In short, I view the socioeconomic and political dimension of these migrations from an ethnological and anthropological point of view. The economic and political migrations from the Gora region at the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century represent the continuation of earlier migrations, albeit more intensive and larger in scope (whole families are migrating). There migrations can be viewed as the effects of political changes in Kosovo, as well as the socioeconomic crisis of the 1990’s. There are no fixed boundaries between these types of migrations, and the only truly stand out examples are the cases in which people migrated for safety reasons. A certain type of migration can be identified based on the terminology used by the interlocutors. I have encountered the terms “banishment” and “displacement” in the narrative discourse of my interlocutors. These terms are used to describe the migrations from Gora during the 1999 war, as well as immediately after. The differences between economic and political migrants can be gouged from other factors such as going to Gora during vacations and holidays as well as investing money into real-estate in the region. Individuals who emigrated from Gora because they feared for their and the loves of their families go to Gora rarely (to attend funerals for example) and are not currently thinking of investing unlike those who had left Gora as economic migrants. There are no differences when it comes to where people migrate to for different reasons. Places of migration can, however, be indicative of the form of migration in the sense of whether people migrated to a foreign country or not. One can turn into the other due to the changing of state borders. Thus migrations from Gora to cities and towns in Serbia became international after Kosovo declared independence. In this context, migrations from Gora to Serbia can be defined twofold, both at the level of the individual and at the level of the community. This leads to the conclusion that, in the case of migrations which are the focus of this paper, one needs to be careful not only of their typology, but also their conceptualization as well as the positions from which a certain migration is conceptualized.

The Internet has revolutionized our economies, societies, and everyday lives. Many social phenomena are no longer the same as they were in the pre‐Internet era: they have been “Internetized.” We define the Internetization of international migration, and we investigate it by exploring the links between the Internet and migration outcomes all along the migration path, from migration intentions to actual migration. Our analyses leverage a number of sources, both at the micro‐ and the macro‐level, including the Gallup World Poll, the Arab Barometer, data from the International Telecommunication Union, the Italian population register, and unique register data from a migrant reception center in Southern Italy. We also distinguish between economic migrants—those who leave their country of origin with the aim of seeking better economic opportunities elsewhere—and political migrants—those who are forced to leave their countries of origin for political or conflict‐related reasons. Our findings point to a consistently positive relationship between the diffusion of the Internet, migration intentions, and migration behaviors, supporting the idea that the Internet is not necessarily a driving force of migration per se, but rather an enabling “supportive agent.” These associations are particularly relevant for economic migrants, at least for migration intentions. Further analyses underscore the importance of the Internet in providing a key informational channel which helps to define clearer migration trajectories.

BackgroundHealth literacy (HL) is considered an important prerequisite for health. HL research often identifies migrants as vulnerable for low HL. However, in-depth data on HL among migrants and its determinants are still scarce, especially in Germany. Therefore, the analysis presents first time data on HL among migrants in Germany, specifically in the domains of health care, disease prevention and health promotion, considering migrant-specific and universal factors, such as social and psychological aspects.MethodsAround 1.000 first- and second-generation adult migrants from two of the largest migrant groups in Germany, from Turkey and former Soviet Union (FSU), were interviewed face-to-face in German, Turkish or Russian in late summer 2020. HL was measured using the HLS19-Q47 instrument. Bi- and multivariate statistical analyses were conducted.ResultsMore than half of the migrants have limited general HL on average. HL in disease prevention and health promotion was lower than in health care. Low social status, financial deprivation, low literacy skills and low self-efficacy were negatively correlated with each HL domain. Social integration, by contrast, goes along with a higher HL. Duration of stay in Germany and country of origin were only partly associated with HL.ConclusionsOur study goes beyond existing studies by analyzing HL in its domains and including the explanatory power of self-efficacy and social integration for migrants’ HL. Moreover, we reveal that migrants can't generally be considered as vulnerable, as oftentimes outlined. There is need for targeted interventions, e.g. enhancing usability of health information, for the abovementioned subgroups regarding differences in domains.Key messages• HL among migrants varies across domains and is only partly linked to migrant-specific features but mainly associated with universal aspects.• Measures to increase HL should consider differences in domains and address vulnerable subgroups including targeted interventions, respectively.

Recent literature shows that migrant populations in Western countries are generally less physically active than their host populations. The purpose of the present study was to expand research investigating associations between physical activity (PA) and acculturation and their relationship with several socio-demographic factors among Turkish migrants in Germany and England. The sample consisted of 521 Turkish migrants. Migrant generation, length of residence, and language proficiency were used as indicators of acculturation. Acculturation was not associated with PA among migrants in Germany and England. PA of migrants was significantly associated with migrant's host country, age, sex, marital status, and education. The total PA of migrants in Germany was higher than that of migrants in England; the large majority of females in both Germany and England had low PA, whereas most males had moderate PA. Seemingly, PA in Turkish migrant populations will not necessarily increase as a result of greater acculturation to the host society.

This paper studies whether population migration data can be used to answer questions on labour mobility between regions. Using regional data of the Statistisches Bundesamt for population and labour migration, panel data estimations are conducted for the period 1993–1995, as the high average migratory flows of the earlier period, 1989–1992, had settled down. The conclusion emerges that if normalized population and labour migration data are used, the discrepancy in the results is small and this study's results on elasticity coefficients for identical models in each of the cases by and large produce similar results. The major difference emerges with the elasticity coefficient of the housing variable. In general, one may conclude that population migration may be used to examine labour migration issues.

The present study examined the effect of group labels on helping behavioral intentions toward displaced people in Germany. Specifically, it examined the impact of different labels evoking either voluntary or forced migration (i.e., migrants, economic migrants, and refugees) on different helping orientations (e.g., dependency vs. autonomy‐oriented helping) and if these effects occur via perceived intergroup threat, warmth and competence stereotypes. Participants (N = 304) were randomly assigned to one of three conditions (refugee vs. migrant vs. economic migrant) and read fabricated case vignettes, featuring a displaced person who arrived in Germany recently. Results showed that, as predicted, the use of different group labels affected the helping orientations of host society members, as well as, the stereotypes they held. No significant label effects were found for intergroup threat. While the label refugee evoked dependency‐oriented helping intentions and triggered paternalistic stereotypes, the label economic migrants increased opposition to help, decreased help affirmation and evoked envious stereotypes. Practical implications to strengthen peaceful intergroup relations between host society members and newcomers are discussed.

When social networking sites based in authoritarian states expand transnationally, digital media environments create soft power resources for these states. Rather than being an intrusion into national cyber-spaces “from outside”, these communication networks are constructed by multiple actors, not all of whom are backed or coordinated by the authoritarian state. Diasporic actors are of special interest here. Using reposts as a direct measure of information flows on the Russian social network VKontakte(VK), this article reconstructs Russian-language networks of influence related to post-Soviet migrants in Germany. It shows that transnational communicative spaces evolve around collective resources related to these migrants by tracing how transnational and multidirectional content flow is organized between the post-Soviet space and Germany. Identifiable political sub-networks are found to be dominated by anti-liberal and anti-Western positions, ideologically and thematically compatible with official Russian state discourses. Right-wing radicals, another target audience of Russian soft power strategies in Europe, are shown to be interconnected with the publics of Russian-speakers in Germany and in the post-Soviet space. Communicative spaces on social networks are thus not purely metaphorical, but underpin the extraterritorial reach of authoritarian regime.

IntroductionIN 2010, WHEN LAUREN BEUKES' ZOO CITY1 WAS PUBLISHED, Johannesburg's city authorities were promoting continent's premiere and most prosperous Afropolis as a 'World Class City in Africa'. The epithet coincided with an international campaign to promote South Africa as a country where impossible was perfectly possible. In particular, this referred to country's capacity to host Soccer World Cup in 2010, and in general it referred to South Africa's peaceful transition from apartheid to a fully functioning democracy during 1990s.In parts of South Africa, simmering tensions between unemployed black South Africans and hundreds of thousands of foreign economic and political migrants and refugees exploded. In horrific xenophobic attacks during 2009, violence against Africans from rest of continent was justified as though South Africans were one species and Africans another. These attacks were often based on visible distinctions such as facial structure, skin colour, and placement of smallpox vaccination scars which differed depending on whether colonial authorities who introduced smallpox vaccina- tions were British, French, or Portuguese. While inter-ethnic tension certainly existed in pre-colonial times, colonialism and apartheid's race-based ideologies served to entrench these attitudes even further. In a post-apartheid transitional period, these differences bubbled to surface in equally crude visual registers.This essay considers Zoo City's alternative reading of Johannesburg - a reading that imposes itself on readings of metropolis that city authorities so hoped for during 2010. The novel is set in a near-future 2011 and provides a view counter to often self-congratulatory perspective presented to tourists by city's establishment. The novel writes back to empire, apartheid, and present regime. It brings wildlife experience, so effectively promoted by tourism agencies, into very heart of city, and, in so doing, author also comments on default notions of Africa and its muchvaunted 'wilderness safaris', city, and occult. Beukes creates a world that is both intimately familiar to Jo'burgers and quite defamiliarizing at same time. As speculative fiction, Zoo City falls firmly into new and dynamic genre of post-national fantasy - a genre that is obtaining increasing currency in former colonial territories such as India, Africa, and South American nations.In both postcolonial and speculative fiction, vision of future is central to how Other will be embodied in time, place, and space. Raja and Nandi maintain:The connection between science fiction and postcolonial studies is almost natural: both these fields are deeply concerned with questions of temporality, space, and existence. Central also to both these fields of study are questions of other - human, machine, cyborg - and nature of multiple narratives of history and utopias and dystopias of future.2In Lauren Beukes' novel, another dimension of future is added to binaries of utopia and dystopia and notion of good versus evil with introduction of a zootopia.Zoo City, NovelA zootopia is a morally far more ambiguous dystopian phenomenon where people across world who have been involved in death of humans are paired with physically manifested animal familiars in an aposymbiotic relationship.3 They are known as or zoos. By using a near-future zootopic Johannesburg as a setting, and by placing animalled characters firmly in realm of speculative Other, Beukes addresses issues of difference, dispossession, dystopia, crime, and cruelty that continue to dominate psyche of nation despite upbeat nature of South Africa's media advertising. a city like any other, is constantly being written and rewritten in literature: Writing city, particularly writing city of Johannesburg, Anne Putter proposes, is like utilizing subject matter and everyday life of city as an 'idea': a means of expressing societal concerns and considering the matter of willed mobility and in post-apartheid/transitional period of South Africa as opposed to forced migration of apartheid era. …

EuroKhat: A pilot study on Khat consumption among Yemeni migrants in Germany.

This chapter explores how transnational media and culture impacts on the identity formation of recent Latvian migrants in Germany. In the context of the EU, Germany opened its labour market to the new EU countries rather late, when compared to other ‘old’ EU countries. This has had an effect on the composition of the group of Latvian migrants going to Germany, and their identities. In the light of this, this chapter examines how Latvian migrants in Germany feel and experience their belonging to Latvia and its culture. It analyses the social and communicative practices crucial for the development of belonging, including the rootedness in the country where they live and the cultural references that are important for them. The evidence for the analysis in this chapter comes from in-depth interviews, open media diaries and network maps of Latvian migrants in Germany. The chapter situates the description of evidence in the framework of cultural identity concepts and discusses the role of culture and media in the process of building migrant identity. The chapter argues that culture is shaping the transnational self-perception of Latvian migrants in Germany – as it provides collective narratives of imagined common frames of references, and confirms feelings of belonging and distinction.