Recollection and Relocation in Immigration: Russian‐Jewish Immigrants “Normalize” Their Anti‐Semitic Experiences

Abstract

This study conceptualizes the relationship between recollection of the past and relocation in the context of immigration. Combining symbolic interactionist and narrative paradigms, it explores how immigrants'representations of past experiences inform their identity construction and the process of entering the host society. Our interpretive analysis of personal narratives related spontaneously by eighty‐nine Russian‐Jewish immigrants in Israel and Germany reveals that they choose to “normalize” their anti‐Semitic experiences by representing them as secondary, expected, and “normal.” They do so via four narrating tactics of normalization: obscuring, self‐exclusion, vindication, and essentializing stigma. Each tactic devalues the cultural depiction (grand narrative) of anti‐Semitic experiences as transformative and traumatic. By normalizing their past, the immigrants deconstruct and resist the authority and moral commands of the national narrative they encounter in both societies. Putting forward normalization as an alternative interpretation, the immigrants claim ownership of their biography and cultural identity.

The Aroma of Recollection: Olfaction, Nostalgia, and the Shaping of the Sensuous Self

“…In this way, the act of recalling is a form of somatic work: a sensual practice actively deployed as a vehicle that individuals use in their efforts to maintain self continuity over time. Consistent with Mead (1929), the present attends to what is recalled and the past aids in structuring the present (Rapoport et. al.…”

The Privatized Meaning of Wartime Deployments: Examining the Narratives of Norwegian Military Spouses

“…The women confronted such negative stigma by not defining the period in negative terms, framing it instead as a legitimate event in their flow of life (cf. Rapoport, Lomsky-Feder, and Heider 2002).…”

Identity Issues and Challenges Faced by Russian Immigrants in New Zealand

“…As suggested by Rapoport et al (2002), to engage in a normalizing process would entail negotiating unfavourable identity constructions by transferring the blame for this onto self. This strategy may be used by immigrants in order to re-claim their sense of identity as they refuse to accept the power of society to dictate its rules of construction.…”

“…Sampson (1989) argues that the ownership over socio-cultural resources, essential for identity construction, lies with the community, which accumulates and continuously re-produces these resources. Consequently, immigrants have to go through a learning process of familiarizing themselves with the local socio-cultural environment, in order to be able to construct or re-construct their identities, re-claiming their ownership over the available resources (Rapoport, Lomsky-Feder & Heider, 2002).…”

“…In contrast, countries such as the USA, Canada, Israel and some others have received large numbers of Russians and other ethnicities from territories of the former Soviet Union, triggering academic interest in such topics as identity production (e.g., Elias, 2005;Rapoport et al, 2002;Resnik, 2006;Vinokurov, Birman & Trickett, 2000). …”