Immigrants’ Internet Use and Identity from an Intergenerational Perspective: Immigrant Senior Citizens and Youngsters from the Former Soviet Union in Israel

Introduction

Immigration to and integration in a new society are among the most dynamic and complex processes in an individual’s life, characterized by numerous discoveries, confusions and challenges that eventually lead to significant personal changes. According to Maines (1978), one may distinguish between two different paths of immigrant adaptation, body and self: The first addresses instrumental aspects, such as finding suitable housing and employment, while the second entails establishment of new social contacts, long-term socialization to new values, norms and codes of behavior and new identity construction alongside preservation of the original one.

Hence, immigrants’ evolving identity necessarily combines identification with one’s new home with longing for the old one; looking around at the new environment but also looking back at life in the faraway homeland (Sreberny, 2000). Moreover, in the era of ethnic renaissance, youngsters with immigrant backgrounds also feel the need to reconfirm and reinforce their ethnic identities. Such youth face a particularly multifaceted and complicated identity task, as they experience cultural adaptation at the same time as preservation and reaffirmation of their homeland identity (Portes & Rumbaut, 2001).

In this sense, media offer immigrants a variety of resources helping them in their ongoing adjustment to a new society and maintenance of their ethnic identity (see e.g. Bailey, Georgiou, & Harindranth, 2007; Elias, 2008). Recent studies also noted that alongside preservation of certain aspects of the original identity, immigrants renegotiate and modify this identity through interaction with homeland media content perceived and interpreted through the prism of local reality. Furthermore, over the past decade, the Internet became a major medium that provides immigrants with a variety of tools, resources and technological platforms that may be used in their attempts to maintain their original identity and to strengthen their affiliation with homeland and with compatriots in other countries. Hence, the Internet facilitates creation of digital diasporas that share a common cultural background, a common set of symbols and a common history, thus preserving a distinctive ethnic identity (Ding, 2007; Elias and Shorer-Zeltser, 2006; Everett, 2009; Yang, 2003).

Accordingly, this chapter analyzes how the need to preserve ethnic identity and affiliation with one’s homeland is expressed and fulfilled through Internet use by two distinctive groups of immigrants from the Former Soviet Union (FSU) in Israel: Immigrant youngsters aged 12-18 and immigrant senior citizens (hereinafter: “seniors”) aged 65 and above. The aim of such simultaneous examination is not to identify the obvious intergenerational differences in Internet use but rather to increase our understanding of the Internet’s potential for preserving original cultural identity among different groups of immigrant users, irrespective of age. The findings are based on two recent studies: A 2006 study of immigrant youth that included in-depth interviews with 70 immigrant adolescents (Elias and Lemish, 2009) and a 2009 study of older immigrants that included 32 in-depth interviews (Khvorostianov, Elias, & Nimrod, in press 2012).