L Remennick
Biographic Data
| ID | 5130 |
|---|---|
| NAME | L Remennick |
| GIVEN NAMES | L |
| FAMILY NAME | Remennick |
| SIGNATURE | REMENNICK L |
| AFFILIATIONS | Bar-Ilan University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1405-0909 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 91 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 590 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 91 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1990 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 13 |
“Girls Blended in, While Boys Had to Fight
International research on the integration of immigrant youth often overlooks significant gender differentials in how boys and girls experience prejudice and social exclusion in the host societies. This article draws upon biographical interviews with members of the ex-Soviet immigrant Generation 1.5 who grew up in disadvantaged Israeli neighborhoods rife with intergroup violence. Interviewees shared their memories of school years spent among other…
Russian Street’ in the Jewish Homeland
Soviet Jews between Conformism, Dissent and Emigration
Intercultural dynamics in urban periphery
In most western democracies, waves of mass migration entail uneasy intercultural encounters between native majorities and newcomers. Despite the universal nature of these interactions on the ground, there is paucity of micro-sociological and ethnographic research that documents and interprets these encounters ‘from below’. This essay explores the evolving relations between ex-Soviet immigrants and veteran Mizrahi Jews who have shared for over thr…
Masculinity tested by immigration
Today I am a Russian-Moroccan”
Contextualising the Russian to Hebrew language shift in three generations of Russian Israelis
The research on language dynamics in the context of migration and integration has been dominated by applied linguists and educators, who described and measured native language attrition and emerging bilingualism among immigrants and their children. In parallel, sociolinguists discussed the role of language ideology/policy of the host society and family language milieu. Adopting a macro sociolinguistic view, the current article explores the social…
Critical citizenship and civic participation in three generations of Russian Israelis
Civic behaviour of immigrants reflects both their pre-migration political socialization and the exposure to new political realities in the host country. Jewish immigrants to Israel receive citizenship soon upon arrival and are endowed with all political and economic rights in their adopted country. This essay highlights the long-term dynamics of civic attitudes and participation in three consecutive generations of ex-Soviet Israelis: from adult m…
Hosts, not guests, in Israel”
Jewish immigrants to Israel (olim) receive citizenship soon upon arrival and are endowed with all political and economic rights in their adopted country. Civic attitudes and behaviour of olim reflect both their pre-migration political socialization and their exposure to Israeli realities. This article highlights the dynamics of citizenship and civic participation in the younger cohorts of ex-Soviet Israelis (generations 1.5 and 2.0) vs. their par…
Gender and power relations in cultural transition
Joining the tribe
Neonatal male circumcision is closely tied to Jewish identity and is socially normative in Israel. Soon after the mass arrival of secular, uncircumcised Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union in the early 1990s, the state sponsored mass circumcision campaigns for adolescents and adult men enabling them to join the Jewish collective, socially and religiously. Some two decades later, these men break the silence exposing their traumatic expe…
Ethnic trauma in migration
This article lays ground for the concept of ethnic trauma for understanding the crisis of migration and its aftermath. The analysis is based on autobiographical stories recently published by the online community of the women who immigrated to Israel from the USSR/FSU as children or adolescents (Generation 1.5) in the early 1990s. Despite its self-selected nature, this story-telling project captures many generic features of the Russian-Israeli (an…
No place like home
Research on return migration of the highly skilled is dominated by economic reasoning, whereas nonmaterial drivers of their repatriation are poorly understood. This study explored the journeys of 22 Israeli academic families who returned home after 3–7 years of (post)doctoral training in the United States/Canada. The migration narratives of these families, belonging to Israeli Ashkenazi elites, were interpreted using Bourdieu's concepts of cultur…
« Les jeunes Russes de la génération “un et demi”, un nouveau groupe identitaire israélien »
William Korey’s “The Right to Leave for Soviet Jews
William Korey’s “The Right to Leave for Soviet Jews: The Legal and Moral Aspects”." East European Jewish Affairs, 50(3), pp. 287–288
The Israeli Diaspora in Berlin
In this ethnographic essay, I reflect on the origins and present condition of the new (post-2010) Israeli diaspora in Berlin. Based on 10 months of participant observation, I map out the main sub-streams of this emigration; elicit the economic, professional, and political reasons for leaving Israel; and explore these émigrés’ initial encounter with German society. My observations suggest that many Israeli residents of Berlin (mostly secular) redi…
Silent Mothers, Articulate Daughters
Larissa Remennick, Silent Mothers, Articulate Daughters: Two Generations of Russian Israeli Women Doing Jewishness and Gender, Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women's Studies & Gender Issues, No. 32 (Spring 2018), pp. 58-76
Generation 1.5 of Russian Israelis
Over the last 5 years, we conducted several ethnographic studies on the social, cultural, and political locations of the young Israeli adults who belong to Generation 1.5 of the ex-Soviet immigrant wave of the 1990s (those who moved to Israel as older children or adolescents). These studies showed that despite successful instrumental integration in the local middle classes in terms of educational and occupational mobility, these 1.5ers keep disti…
Subversive identity and cultural production by the Russian-Israeli Generation 1.5
This article belongs to the series presenting our ongoing ethnographic project on the Russian-Israeli Generation 1.5 . It discusses the nexus between immigrant identity, civic activism and cultural production among young adults born in the (former) Soviet Union, who migrated to Israel as older children or adolescents. We examine the new, protest-driven activism among young Russian Israelis while drawing on the concepts of reactive ethnicity and c…
Choosing One or Being Both
A large share of Russian/Soviet Jews, especially among younger cohorts, are descendants of intermarriage. In this essay, I reflect on the implications of the built-in ambivalence of these mixed ethnics, comparing their identity qualms and social strategies in their native Russia and after migration to Israel. My analysis draws upon participant observation and interviews conducted in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and across Israel over the last 20 years…
We Are Jews Again
This book is a condensed version of the extensive, four-volume history of the Soviet Jewish Movement originally published in Russian during 2008–2012 by one of its key activists, the late Yuli Kosharovsky (1941–2014). The edited English edition makes this compelling insider account of Soviet Jewish activism from the early 1960s till the demise of the USSR in the late 1980s accessible to western readers. While the joint pressure of American and Is…
Celebrating Memory and Belonging
Drawing on the theoretical concept of collective memory and migration, and politics of belonging, this article explores performative belonging enacted in the series of holidays and commemorative rites organized by young Russian immigrants in Israel's major metropolis. Our ethnography is based on 18 months of participant observation at the cultural association Fishka in South Tel-Aviv. As part of our field work, we documented public celebrations o…
Russian Jews on Three Continents
In the early 1990s, more than 1.6 million Jews from the former Soviet Union emigrated to Israel, the United States, Canada, Germany, and other Western countries. Larissa Remennick relates the saga of their encounter with the economic marketplaces, lifestyles, and everyday cultures of their new homelands, drawing on comparative sociological research among Russian-Jewish immigrants.Although citizens of Jewish origin ostensibly left the former Sovie…
Coercion, Good Will, or Self-Interest
Voluntary work of citizens for the benefit of society at large or its underprivileged members is a salient feature of developed civic cultures. Under state socialism, the very essence of volunteerism was hollowed out by its top–down, coercive “management” and ideological control. This article highlights the experiences and perceptions of voluntary work under socialism drawing on retrospective narratives of ex-Soviet immigrants in Israel who conti…
Patient‐centered IVF. Bioethics and Care in a Dutch Clinic. Trudie Gerrits, New York
Language acquisition, ethnicity and social integration among former Soviet immigrants of the 1990s in Israel
Russian immigrants in different host countries are prone to ethno-linguistic retention, which in Israel was augmented by their advanced age structure. The issue of the dominant language (Hebrew versus Russian) is very central to the local discourse on ethnicity and immigrant integration. As a by-product of ethnic mobilization during the 1990s, a rather autonomous Russian community has emerged in Israel - with its own labour market, consumer servi…
The quest for the perfect baby
Since the mid-1990s, the Israeli medical scene has witnessed a real boom in elective prenatal testing for inherited diseases that has spread beyond risk groups to the general Jewish population, especially of Ashkenazi (European) origin. This study tried to identify key social influences involved in the growing range and prevalence of prenatal genetic tests as they emerged from women's own perspective. Twenty-seven women having blood tests for gen…
Childless in the Land of Imperative Motherhood
Professional Identities in Transit
Immigrant professionals comprise a growing segment within current migration waves, but the determinants of successful transnational skill transfer are poorly understood. In this paper, I offer a framework for the evaluation of these determinants, drawing upon three empirical studies among immigrant professionals from the former Soviet Union in Israel. I start by describing the social context of immigrant integration, including policies aimed at a…
Survival of the Fittest
This qualitative study explores the determinants of occupational integration among recent immigrants whose profession is culturally and linguistically dependent. It compares personal accounts of 36 former Soviet school teachers of math and physics, of whom 20 succeeded in regaining their occupation in Israel and 16 left teaching for different reasons. Analysis of the interviews shows that, even in a society committed to the goal of professional i…
Transnational community in the making
Drawing on integrated analysis of Israeli statistics and social research (including a 2001 survey among 800 Russian Israelis), this article explores the birth of a transnational community of Russian Jews living in Israel and in other branches of the post-Soviet diaspora. The theoretical focus of the paper is the relationship between transnationalism and immigrant integration in the host country. It is shown that, due to its timing and composition…
Ethnic trauma in migration
This article lays ground for the concept of ethnic trauma for understanding the crisis of migration and its aftermath. The analysis is based on autobiographical stories recently published by the online community of the women who immigrated to Israel from the USSR/FSU as children or adolescents (Generation 1.5) in the early 1990s. Despite its self-selected nature, this story-telling project captures many generic features of the Russian-Israeli (an…
Generation 1.5 of Russian Israelis
Over the last 5 years, we conducted several ethnographic studies on the social, cultural, and political locations of the young Israeli adults who belong to Generation 1.5 of the ex-Soviet immigrant wave of the 1990s (those who moved to Israel as older children or adolescents). These studies showed that despite successful instrumental integration in the local middle classes in terms of educational and occupational mobility, these 1.5ers keep disti…
Women of the “Sandwich” Generation and Multiple Roles
By Helping Others, We Helped Ourselves
Recent immigrants seldom join the ranks of volunteers for various social causes. Immigrants from former socialist countries have been shown to be particularly averse to organized forms of volunteering for reasons rooted in their past, including forced forms of collectivism imposed by the state. In this qualitative study, we explored the perceptions and practices of volunteering among ex-Soviet immigrants (mostly educated middle-aged women) who ra…
Women with a Russian Accent’ in Israel
Intergenerational Transfer in Russian-Israeli Immigrant Families
Existing research on immigrant youth in North America and Europe points to the salient role of parental pre-migration socio-economic status for the second generation's integration. Israel offers a unique opportunity to examine inter-generational transfer, drawing on the experiences of former Soviet immigrants. The study explored parent–child influences in terms of educational attainment and social mobility among 40 immigrant families, of whom hal…
Career continuity among immigrant professionals
About 82,000 Soviet-trained engineers and technologists arrived in Israel during the 1990s, joining some 30,000 of their local colleagues and creating dramatic over-supply of engineering cadres on the small Israeli market. This follow-up study explores costs and benefits of different personal strategies of occupational adjustment among this group of professionals, underscoring the roles of age, gender and specialis ation. The study included a thr…
Cross-cultural dating patterns on an Israeli campus
This study focused on reported dating patterns between Israeli-born and immigrant students from the former Soviet Union. Earlier survey findings indicated that twice as many Russian immigrant women reported having had a romantic relationship with an Israeli-born partner than did their male counterparts. Six focus groups were conducted on two Israeli campuses with third-year BA students. Results suggest that Russian women are 'popular' in part bec…
From Russian to Hebrew via HebRush
(2003). From Russian to Hebrew via HebRush : Intergenerational Patterns of Language Use among Former Soviet Immigrants in Israel. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development: Vol. 24, No. 5, pp. 431-453
From Abortion to Contraception. A Resource to Public Policies and Reproductive Behavior in Central and Eastern Europe from 1917 to the Present
All my life is one big nursing home”
Retired and Making a Fresh Start
Social research on immigrants has usually centred on working age groups or youth, while studies on retired immigrants were typically driven by the social work, geriatric, or nursing agendas, centring on the issues of health, stress, social, and medical services. Trying to explore migration in old age from a broader sociological perspective, this qualitative study addressed different aspects of the socio‐cultural adjustment of older Russian immigr…
Technology Versus Responsibility
About 13,000 physicians from the former Soviet Union have found themselves in the saturated medical market in Israel as a result of the latest wave of immigration. This paper examines the gap in professional attitudes and practices between Israeli and Soviet MDs and the cognitive mechanisms employed by immigrant physicians in the process of adjustment to the new medical culture. The study draws on 25 semistructured interviews with recent (about t…
Subversive identity and cultural production by the Russian-Israeli Generation 1.5
This article belongs to the series presenting our ongoing ethnographic project on the Russian-Israeli Generation 1.5 . It discusses the nexus between immigrant identity, civic activism and cultural production among young adults born in the (former) Soviet Union, who migrated to Israel as older children or adolescents. We examine the new, protest-driven activism among young Russian Israelis while drawing on the concepts of reactive ethnicity and c…
Exploring Intercultural Relationships
To explore the internal dynamics of intercultural marriage, we conducted in-depth interviews with 18 married couples, of whom one partner was born in Israel and the other immigrated from the former Soviet Union. The interviews focused on the contentious issues of everyday life: self-identity, language use, cultural consumption, relations with the families/friends, division of household labor, and childrearing. The findings point to a clear tenden…
Transnational lifestyles among Russian Israelis
Despite the expanding use of the transnational perspective, grounded qualitative research on everyday expressions of transnationalism has been scant. In this article, I explore the economic and social ties with former homelands among three categories of former Soviet immigrants of the 1990s in Israel, namely ethnically mixed families split by emigration; young professionals and entrepreneurs; and retirees who keep two homes - one in Israel and th…
Immigration, Gender, and Psychosocial Adjustment
You Never Stop Being a Doctor
This article is based on 28 in-depth interviews with Russian immigrant physicians (11 men and 17 women, age range 30-53) who decided not to seek Israeli medical license and converted to physiotherapy. This research was theoretically informed by the literature on physicians' professional commitment. It explored the case of conversion from a perceived higher to lower status health care occupation and the ensuing changes in former doctors' professio…
Immigrants from Chernobyl-affected areas in Israel
Induced abortion as cancer risk factor
Induced abortion as cancer
Epidemology and determinants of induced abortion in the U.S.S.R
Family planning practices and attitudes among former Soviet new immigrant women in Israel
Immigration and gender
L'effondrement du systeme communiste s'est accompagne d'une arrivee massive d'immigrants sovietique en Israel. Parmi eux, les femmes ont rencontre, en plus des problemes classiques de l'immigration (necessite d'adaptations physiques, psychologiques et sociales dans un nouvel environnement), certaines nouvelles normes concernant leur sexualite, et la question de la gestion de leur fertilite (controle des naissances). Cet article se penche sur les …
Technology Versus Responsibility
About 13,000 physicians from the former Soviet Union have found themselves in the saturated medical market in Israel as a result of the latest wave of immigration. This paper examines the gap in professional attitudes and practices between Israeli and Soviet MDs and the cognitive mechanisms employed by immigrant physicians in the process of adjustment to the new medical culture. The study draws on 25 semistructured interviews with recent (about t…
Women with a Russian Accent’ in Israel
Women of the “Sandwich” Generation and Multiple Roles
Preventive behavior among recent immigrants
Childless in the Land of Imperative Motherhood
From Abortion to Contraception. A Resource to Public Policies and Reproductive Behavior in Central and Eastern Europe from 1917 to the Present
Institutional and Attitudinal Factors Involved in Higher Mortality of Israeli Women after Coronary Bypass Surgery
Despite their lower cardiovascular risks, women have higher case-fatality ratios after myocardial infarction (MI) and cardiac surgery. Along with women's older age and co-morbidity, this reflects gender bias in the timely diagnosis and treatment of heart disease in many western countries. Drawing on the theoretical framework offered by McKinlay (1996), current study examined attitudes and practices contributing to late diagnosis and substandard t…
Socio-cultural context and women's experiences of abortion
This study explored the experience and emotional aftermath of induced abortion in a crosscultural setting, comparing native Israeli women and recent immigrants from the former Soviet Union. The dataset includes 48 interviews (23 and 25, respectively) with women recruited via post-abortion counselling services and by snowballing. The study explored the relationship between macro-level factors such as legislation, practice and public attitudes towa…
All my life is one big nursing home”
What Makes Women Sick? Maternity, Modesty, and Militarism in Israeli Society
Public Attitudes toward Abortion in Israel
Objective . For the first time since the mid‐1970s, this study explored sociodemographic correlates of abortion attitudes among Israeli Jews and compared them with those reported by the General Social Survey in the United States. Methods . A survey in the representative sample of Jewish adults living in urban areas across Israel ( N = 546) that included two related items on the attitude toward abortion for nonvital reasons. Results . Using multip…
Survival of the Fittest
This qualitative study explores the determinants of occupational integration among recent immigrants whose profession is culturally and linguistically dependent. It compares personal accounts of 36 former Soviet school teachers of math and physics, of whom 20 succeeded in regaining their occupation in Israel and 16 left teaching for different reasons. Analysis of the interviews shows that, even in a society committed to the goal of professional i…
Immigrants from Chernobyl-affected areas in Israel
Transnational community in the making
Drawing on integrated analysis of Israeli statistics and social research (including a 2001 survey among 800 Russian Israelis), this article explores the birth of a transnational community of Russian Jews living in Israel and in other branches of the post-Soviet diaspora. The theoretical focus of the paper is the relationship between transnationalism and immigrant integration in the host country. It is shown that, due to its timing and composition…
“I Have No Time for Potential Troubles”
What does integration mean? social insertion of Russian immigrants in Israel
The 1.5 Generation of Russian Immigrants in Israel
Diaspora 12:1 2003 The 1.5 Generation of Russian Immigrants in Israel: Between Integration and Sociocultural Retention Larissa Remennick Bar-Ilan University Introduction Consecutive immigrant generations and the process of their incorporation into host societies are emerging as a new focus of interest in the contemporary sociology of migration (Portes and Zhou; Portes and Schauffler; Portes and Rumbaut; Rumbaut and Portes). The bulk of the eviden…
From Russian to Hebrew via HebRush
(2003). From Russian to Hebrew via HebRush : Intergenerational Patterns of Language Use among Former Soviet Immigrants in Israel. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development: Vol. 24, No. 5, pp. 431-453
Retired and Making a Fresh Start
Social research on immigrants has usually centred on working age groups or youth, while studies on retired immigrants were typically driven by the social work, geriatric, or nursing agendas, centring on the issues of health, stress, social, and medical services. Trying to explore migration in old age from a broader sociological perspective, this qualitative study addressed different aspects of the socio‐cultural adjustment of older Russian immigr…
The 1.5 Generation of Russian Immigrants in Israel
Consecutive immigrant generations and the process of their incorporation into host societies are emerging as a new focus of interest in the contemporary sociology of migration (Portes and Zhou; Portes and Schauffler; Portes and Rumbaut; Rumbaut and Portes). The bulk of the evidence from different countries and on various types of migration (ethnic return migration, labor migration, asylum seeking) shows a significant tendency to ethnic and cultur…
You Never Stop Being a Doctor
This article is based on 28 in-depth interviews with Russian immigrant physicians (11 men and 17 women, age range 30-53) who decided not to seek Israeli medical license and converted to physiotherapy. This research was theoretically informed by the literature on physicians' professional commitment. It explored the case of conversion from a perceived higher to lower status health care occupation and the ensuing changes in former doctors' professio…
Political science (79 works) · Sociology (76 works) · Immigration (62 works) · Law (60 works) · Gender Studies (53 works) · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies (42 works) · Law (37 works) · Psychology (34 works) · Politics (32 works) · Gender Studies (31 works)