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Paper short abstract:

Addressing of issues such as multiple identities, national and ethnic identities, memory, sense of belonging and transnational families I seek to explore the identities and every day life of elderly women with Ingrian background in the context of the post-Soviet cultural transformation, migration to Finland and transnational experiences.

Paper long abstract:

The collapse of the Soviet system followed by the difficult cultural transformation together with ethnic mobility and transnational migration, which have specifically increased on both sides of the Finnish-Russian border in 1990s, have had an impact on identity formation process, inter- generational relation and family forms in the Finnish-Russian borderland. This paper focuses on the Ingrian Finns case, an ethnic group which was subjected to the discriminative Soviet policy having been significantly affecting the people's every day life and identities. This paper is documentary based, and contains the in-depth-interviews of elderly women with Ingrian background. Some of the women have moved to Finland, while others have stayed in Russian Karelia (Petrozavodsk). Addressing of issues such as multiple identities, national and ethnic identities, memory and sense of belonging I seek to explore these women's identity formation and reconstruction process in the context of the post-Soviet cultural transformation and migration to Finland. As all the women are involved in transnational families across the Finnish-Russian border I also aimed at the examination of their role in those, and the effect of transnational experiences upon their identities.