"In Russia we were Germans, and now we are Russians." - Dilemmas of identity formation and and communication among German-Russian Aussiedler

Barbara Pfetsch

Discussion Papers, Research Unit: The Public and the Social Movement from WZB Berlin Social Science Center

Abstract: This paper reports preliminary findings generated by a German-Israeli research project on the production and consumption of media by and for ethnic and minority communities. It discusses questions of social integration of ethnic minorities and mass media with respect to dilemmas of identity formation and communication among German-Russian Aussiedler. In the conceptual part, it is assumed that integration must be seen as a complex process of reciprocal social exchange between minority and majority communities, in which selfdefinitions and other-definitions play a crucial role. The media enter the picture as the negotiations of group identities are based on communication in the public sphere. Mass media create a social and political reality, thereby providing a reference system for both majority and minority communities. Against this background, identity politics and mass media functions are examined on the basis of focus group discussions with German-Russian Aussiedler. Identity politics among Ethnic Germans is fundamentally linked to the dilemma that, on the one hand, as full German citizens they belong to the majority society in legal terms. On the other hand, because of their cultural heritage, the experience of migration and language barriers, they feel excluded from the majority community to which they want to belong so badly. Concerning the role of mass media, we found that identity formation, as it is revealed by the orientations of Ethnic Germans, is not made an issue whatsoever in either minority media nor majority media. Not even the media produced for Russian-Germans in Germany touch on questions of identity or self-location of the minority vis a vis the majority. Instead, the minority media are full of practical cookbook-recipes of how to behave properly in a stereotypically-portrayed German society.

Date: 1999
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