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While the concept of legal culture has been receiving a growing attention from scholars, this research often overemphasizes the similarity of the opinions held by different segments of population. Furthermore, the relationship of migration and the change of legal-cultural attitudes has not received particular attention. Drawing on 70 in-depth interviews with the immigrants of the early 1990s from the former Soviet Union to Israel and the secular Israeli Jews, this chapter provides a comprehensive account of the various aspects of legal culture of these groups. The second important finding is the persistence of the legal-cultural attitudes and perceptions over time.

This chapter investigates the economic performance of immigrants from the Former Soviet Union (FSU) countries in Canada. The contribution of this chapter lies in its use of the fall of the Soviet Union as a natural experiment to detect possible differential labour market performances of immigrants undergoing different screening systems and affected by different push and pull factors. In short, the collapse of the former Soviet Union allows an exogenous supply change in the number and type of FSU immigrants potentially destined to enter Canada. For this purpose, Census micro-level data from the 1986, 1991, 1996 and 2001 Canadian Population Census are utilised to estimate earnings and employment outcomes for immigrants arriving from the Soviet Union and from FSU countries before and after the collapse.

This chapter sheds light on long-term trends in the level and structural dynamics of investments in Russian human capital formation from government, corporations, and households. It contributes to the literature discussing theoretical issues and empirical patterns of modernization, human development, as well as the transition from a centralized to a market economy. The empirical evidence is based on extensive utilization of the dataset introduced in Didenko, Földvári, and Van Leeuwen (2013). Our findings provide support for the view expressed in Gerschenkron (1962) that in late industrializers the government tended to substitute for the lack of capital and infrastructure by direct interventions. At least from the late nineteenth century the central government's and local authorities' budgets played the primary role. However, the role of nongovernment sources increased significantly since the mid-1950s, i.e., after the crucial breakthrough to an industrial society had been made. During the transition to a market economy in the 1990s and 2000s the level of government contributions decreased somewhat in education, and more significantly in research and development, but its share in overall financing expanded. In education corporate funds were largely replaced by those from households. In health care, Russia is characterized by an increasing share of out-of-pocket payments of households and slow development of organized forms of nonstate financing. These trends reinforce obstacles to Russia's future transition, as regards institutional change toward a more significant and sound role of the corporate sector in such branches as R&D, health care, and, to a lesser extent, education.

This study examines the educational aspirations of immigrant students, who are descendants of eight different immigrant communities in Germany. First, the article shows that compared to native German students, the educational aspirations of students with migration origin vary substantially. Challenging previous narratives of immigrant optimism and information deficit, the article suggests that the students of Turkish origin develop a conscious appraisal of obtaining an academic high-school qualification (AHSQ), even if they realize they will not be able to receive one by the end of the high-school. The study also shows that the duration of their stay in Germany plays a significant role in attenuating the high educational aspirations of most immigrant communities. However, Turkish students constitute an exception to this finding as they maintain high idealistic aspirations from first- to third-generation. The return migrant students from the former Soviet Union are the only group who report high educational aspirations, when asked about both their idealistic and realistic aspirations. Finally, the findings indicate that the position of the particular immigrant groups within the German social status hierarchy is a strong determinant of the educational aspirations of immigrant students and their parents.

This paper is an analysis of the English-language proficiency and labor market earnings of adult male Soviet Jewish immigrants to the United States from 1965 to 2000, using the 2000 Census of Population. Comparisons are made to similar analyses using the 1980 and 1990 Censuses. A consistent finding is that recently arrived Soviet Jewish immigrants have lower levels of English proficiency and earnings than other immigrants, other variables being the same. However, they have a steeper improvement in both proficiency and earnings with duration in the United States and the differences from the other European immigrants disappear after a few years. The Soviet Jewish immigrants have both a higher level of schooling and a larger effect of schooling on earnings than other immigrants, even other European immigrants.

The lower initial English proficiency and earnings, the steeper improvement with duration, and the rapid attainment of parity is consistent with the “refugee” nature of their migration, as distinct from being purely economic migrants. That the same pattern exists across three censuses suggests that the low English proficiency and earnings of those recently arrived in the 2000 Census data reflects a refugee assimilation process, and not a decline in the unmeasured dimensions of the earnings potential of recent cohorts of Soviet Jewish immigrants. The very high level of schooling and the larger effect of schooling on earnings among Soviet Jewish immigrants are similar to the patterns found among Jews born in the United States.

Soviet Jewish immigrants appear to have made a very successful linguistic and labor market adjustment, regardless of their period of entry into the United States.

Immigrant and second generation youth face distinct challenges adapting to school environments in the host society. Young people’s popularity is often influenced by style-based subcultures. This research investigates how students from diverse ethnic and linguistic backgrounds in Israel, a multi-ethnic society with a large proportion of immigrant youth, adopt subcultural identities, and the effects this has on popularity attainment.

This study makes use of a nationally representative quantitative survey of Hebrew instructed high schools. Results are analyzed through Structural Equations Modeling.

Results highlight how youth who have less tenure in the country and preserve indigenous languages are increasingly drawn toward delinquent subcultures as a means toward gaining popularity in school. Differences based on ethnic belonging are also discussed.

In order to create a more conducive environment for immigrant children to make friends with locals, educators require knowledge about the causes of social conflict. Immigrant youth are often drawn toward delinquent subcultures as a means for attaining social acceptance, which can lead to perpetual inequalities.

Subcultures are widely recognized as playing an important role in one’s choice of friends, but hitherto little research examined the mediating role that subcultures play for immigrant youth, especially in the Israeli context.

The “gender problem” emerging today in CA as it relates to and involves education actually has long history, and was a target of serious social and political reform during Soviet times. We are interested in describing the problematic emergence; subsequent decline; and current difficulties, policies and practices connected to gender equality CA – with a particular focus on education and higher education. There are important historical writings on this topic, as well as contemporary statistical description of the issues. We undertake to illustrate briefly and describe work in both areas to begin this writing. Yet, this chapter is as much interested in the experiences and understandings of gender, education and lived culture as it is in what the history books say and how the statistics read. Our historical and conceptual discussions and generalizations are thus used primarily as scene setters for our later ethnographic accounts.

Cross-sectional studies have shown that immigrants' earnings tend to rise faster than those of comparable natives. One reason for this is the immigrant's acquisition of proficiency in the host country's native language. Immigrants can improve their knowledge of the host country language either by interacting with native speakers or by taking a formal language course. Focusing on Jewish immigrants in Israel from the Former Soviet Union (FSU), the present chapter examines an immigrant's decision to invest in learning Hebrew by participating in a formal government-sponsored course. The chapter estimates immigrants' lifetime earnings in order to identify those immigrants with the highest potential benefit from taking a Hebrew course and to determine whether they are more likely to attend one. The chapter finds that immigrants respond to pecuniary incentives to acquire the language of the host country and that this is particularly true for immigrants with 13+ years of schooling.

This chapter deals with the perception of (sensed) discrimination and the coping strategies of Russian-speaking female scholars in Germany and applies an intersectional approach between culture, migration, gender and social background. Based on telephone interviews, the study aims to contribute to the discussion on discrimination in research environments and individuals’ professional integration by exploring narratives of migration and work in 13 women who migrated from the former Soviet Union (FSU) to Germany from 1990s to 2010s. Based on the findings, the author derives implications for policy and practice, such as a recommendation to implement introductory conversations with newcomers to reduce culture clash in competitive work contexts.