‘We’re Finns here, and Russians there’: A longitudinal study on ethnic identity construction in the context of ethnic migration

Abstract

In this article, we examine how ethnic Finnish migrants construct their ethnic identities before and after migrating from Russia to Finland. We use a discursive psychological (DP) approach to analyse our longitudinal focus group data. In the analysis, we focus on the ways in which the participants use category labels, rhetorical devices, interpretative repertoires and other discursive resources in accounting for their identities. We also consider the social functions these identity constructions have over the course of migration. In the pre-migration data, participants mostly presented themselves as Finns. In the post-migration data, a larger variety of self-labels was used and the Finnish identity was explicitly problematized. The three main interpretative repertoires used when constructing identities both in Russia and in Finland were the biological repertoire, the repertoire of socialization and the repertoire of intergroup relations.