Paper short abstract:

This paper will examine how Russian-speaking immigrants in Canada maintain, adapt and modify their parenting practices in a double effort to simultaneously secure their Russian identities and occupy a desired class position in the Canadian society.

Paper long abstract:

My focus on intensive parenting in its transnational forms, as practiced in Russian-speaking immigrant communities, aims to examine its everyday aspects, which bear a visible Soviet-era heritage, yet are used by many post-Soviet families as a resource to pursue social mobility in new - both domestic and foreign - environments. Although most of my collaborators are determined not to return to their country of origin, a lot of them nevertheless purposefully immerse their children in the Russian language and culture. Russian literacy has become an important skill in immigrant families, and large North American and European urban centers, including Toronto, have multiple educational facilities where immigrant children are taught competences and conventions of the Russian culture. The paradox of this situation is that these practices often reproduce values of the Russian educational system outside of Russia, and they are adopted by people who are often very skeptical of the current political regime in Russia. This paper will examine the question of why, having left Russia, many immigrants nevertheless choose to reproduce practices that we can interpret as aimed at creating subjects of the Russian state, even though they have located themselves in a position that is external to this state.