The 1.5 Generation of Russian Immigrants in Israel: Between Integration and Sociocultural Retention

Abstract

Consecutive immigrant generations and the process of their incorporation into host societies are emerging as a new focus of interest in the contemporary sociology of migration (Portes and Zhou; Portes and Schauffler; Portes and Rumbaut; Rumbaut and Portes). The bulk of the evidence from different countries and on various types of migration (ethnic return migration, labor migration, asylum seeking) shows a significant tendency to ethnic and cultural retention in the first generation of adult migrants (Alba and Nee; Rumbaut, “Assimilation”; Rumbaut and Portes). When these migrants assimilate at all, the process is usually partial and segmented, that is, the adjustment in some life realms (in the workplace, in educational and other public institutions) is more effective and expedient than in other, more private ones (family life, personal relationships, consumption patterns). In response to these observations, the concept of integration (instrumental adaptation to the host society while retaining the minority’s own ethnocultural core) emerged in modern migration discourse to replace the traditional assimilation perspective in research on first-generation migrants (Nauck; Remennick, “What Does”).