Russian-speaking immigrant students in Finland: Searching for the meaning of languages and cultures

This article focuses on the language identity of young Russianspeaking immigrants in Finland. The concept ’Russian-speaking’ is used to refer both to the descendants of Ingrian Finnish returnees as well as to other young immigrants from the former Soviet Union whose mother tongue is Russian. The phenomenon of language identity is considered with reference to identification with the Russian and Finnish languages and the speakers of these particular languages. It is assumed that attitudes towards the languages and their speakers, language use, and language of communication as well as perceived language proficiency are connected to one’s language identity. These issues, as well as ethnic self-identification and ethnic identity, will be explored. The methods for gathering data were survey and interviews. The survey data for the study were collected during spring 2000. These data were complemented with interviews in the spring 2001. The subjects of the study consisted of 256 Russian-speaking immigrant students studying at the upper secondary level or in vocational education in 13 cities in Finland. The preliminary findings of the study indicate that the language identity of the Russian-speaking immigrant students is mainly Russian and that the Russian language identity is more stable and more distinct in its character that the Finnish one. The attitudes towards the two languages, language use and contacts with the speakers of the languages seem to be connected with language identity. Ethnic identity, in turn, appears to be closely related to language identity. Positive Russian language identity supports Russian ethnic identity and, in contrast, positive Finnish language identity supports Finnish ethnic identity. It also appears that a positive bilingual and biethnic identity is possible