Reinventing Homeland Identities: The Internet in the Lives of Immigrant Adolescents from the Former Soviet Union in Israel 1

The study was supported by the Israel Foundations Trustees. We would like to thank The Burda Center for Innovative Communications for their support of the pilot study on which this research builds. An earlier version of this study was presented at the International Conference on Children and New Media, Tirchirapalli, Tamil Nadu, India, February 2007. 2 This study highlights the unique roles the Internet plays at the intersection of adolescence and immigration as a facilitator of young immigrants ’ search for collective and individual identities. Based on in-depth interviews with 70 teenaged immigrants from the Former Soviet Union (FSU) to Israel, the study showed that the Internet provides valuable resources for personal growth and empowerment during a critical period of material and social disadvantage as young immigrants are engaged in settling down and adjusting to a new society. We conclude that in a world of global migration, the notion of identity has come to be understood as complex, non-uniform, fluid and multidimensional. As identity is constantly evolving and in the process of construction, never becoming permanent or fully resolved, the Internet becomes a central arena for identity confirmation, transformation and reinvention by youth worldwide