Connected by digital imagination. Discourses of belonging and the community building of Russophone migrants in the USA and Great Britain

This chapter is based on the comparative study of social networking in Britain and the USA. Online discussions referring to European culture and Europeanism and conducted by post-Soviet migrants settled in two English-speaking counties represent the data. The chapter attempts to uncover how the host cultural and social context impacts the discourse and how the discourse delimits the ideas of being Russian, European and a “new citizen” in the country of immigration. The data was collected on community websites and in diasporic media outlets (e.g., Russian Sacramento, Russian America, Russian London, Zima, Scottish Russian forum) and Facebook groups (Shotlandia, Russian California and Russian New York). Digital places facilitate migrants’ discussions of their new country of residence and their connections to their country of origin, while Russian emerges as a lingua franca for ethnically diverse groups of émigrés from post-Soviet states. In the analysis, Ruth Wodak’s concept of “Homo Nationalis” is used and, in order to access the dynamics of the migrants’ transition from a newcomer to a new citizen, we study the ways their national past, national present and national future are constructed in the digital discourse. The chapter will also illustrate the dynamic nature of identity construction by analyzing the sources of information and references provided by groups of migrants.