文章基本信息

标题：Book Review: Coming home: Media and Returning Diaspora in Israel and Germany, by Nelly Elias
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作者：Kaja Kaźmierska
期刊名称：Przeglad Socjologii Jakosciowej
电子版ISSN：1733-8069
出版年度：2009
卷号：V
期号：1
出版社：Uniwersity of Lodz
摘要：The book by Nelly Elias entitled "Coming home. Media and returning Diaspora in Israel and Germany" is a comparative study of two groups of immigrants from the former Soviet Union (FSU). It is based on qualitative approach that is 100 semi-structured, in-depth interviews with Russian speaking immigrants who emigrated from FSU between years 1993-2003. In each country there were conducted 50 interviews (p.10). Besides, the author presents in-depth analysis of socio-demographic and cultural features of each group as well as describes immigrants adaptation strategies influenced by local policy of each host country. The declared topic of the book is "comparison between media consumption patterns of Russian – speaking immigrants in Israel and Germany" (p.7). Indeed the author systematically describes first the development of Russian-language media in Israel and Germany and then media in the life of returning Diaspora in Israel and in Germany. These two chapters have symmetrical construction: at the beginning the author characterizes social and cultural patterns of adaptation among FSU immigrants in each country. These patterns, constructed both by immigrants themselves and the host society, influence immigrants' attitude towards acquisition of home-country language as well as strategies of adapting in new environment. As a result, immigrants focus their attention on these media, which in the best way fulfill their needs. Therefore the author in each chapter begins from presenting the most popular media and she gradually moves on towards the least popular. Thus, Israeli immigrants prefer to watch Russian TV channels, read Russian language newspapers, read Russian books and finally, listen to Russian radio. Although they understand the necessity of learning Hebrew, at the same time they do not feel pressure to acquaint it by rejecting their mother tongue. The immigrants' attitude is supported by contemporary Israeli integration ideology that promotes cultural pluralism. Thus, Russian immigrants (it should be added that most of investigated persons had academic degrees – about 70%) realize the need of cultivating their culture of origin and the language skills are defined here as one of important items of the cultural heritage. However it does not mean that they do not identify themselves with the Israeli state and the Jewish identity. On the contrary, when preserving their own culture at the same time they strongly identify with their new (old) homeland – "Israel is a Jewish country. Therefore it is our country" (p.43). This fact can be well recognized in FSU immigrants attitude towards Hebrew media that are much more difficult to deal with