Paper short abstract:

The presentation will demonstrate how children of Russian-speaking migrants vizualise Russiannes in their works initiated by Russian cultural education in Finland. It will discuss transcultural creativity and transformations of ethnic representations in regard to cultural and national identitites.

Paper long abstract:

The poster  will discuss visual representations of Russian culture of children of Russian-speaking migrants in Finland's context.

Considering the community of Russian-speaking migrants who arrived to Finland during the last two decades and their family relations it is possible to detect generation gap between parents and children usually expressed by people in terms of ethnicity. Children are becoming integrated into the new society and parents feel that they are losing the common cultural background with them. Cultural education is seen as a possible solution to the problem. Thus Russian cultural education specially organised for children of different ages is one of the most important activities of the Russian-speaking community. Among other things it provide teaching of Russian language and Russian culture that creates  links with the family, the local Russian community in Finland and the country of departure.

Parents are making efforts to share their cultural background with children. The children in their turn create their own conception of Russian culture: they accept cultural symbols produced by parents, transform them according to their own cultural and social realities and put the images in the new social and cultural context.

The presentation will demonstrate children's works in visual arts and crafts, and analyse cultural symbols used in them in connection with building of children's social and cultural identities. The work is a part of the project "Families on the move across borders: Children's perspective on labour migration in Europe" (University of Eastern Finland, principal investigator Laura Assmuth).