Paper short abstract:

In order to cope in a multicultural environment, different groups need balance between group interaction and shared cultural needs. How does this topic manifest itself in the spontaneously narrated written life stories of common people?

Paper long abstract:

I analyse the written life stories of the inhabitants of Kohtla-Järve. My objective is to find methods of coping with cultural differences in the home and work environment descriptions by narrators with different ethnic background and historical experience. Applying content analysis I concentrate on the problem of one's own and strange: How the matters felt as one's own are distinguished in the narrative from those perceived as strange.

Among Estonian cities, Kohtla-Järve with its surroundings offers specific interest as a multicultural area - none of the bigger ethnic communities is culturally dominant there. However, these communities are internally divided into smaller ethno-cultural groups which cannot always be defined as one or another larger community. For example, as ethnic Russians, Old Believers represent the Russian community; on the other hand as compared to those who

immigrated after WWII, they are "local inhabitants" due to their historical and migration experience. They did not come to Estonia during the Soviet period. Similarly, the Ingrians could partly belong to the Estonian and partly to the Russian community, at the same time being still a separate small ethnic-cultural group with their own experience of history.