Appreciating the past, coping with the present: digital diaspora in later life

Nimrod, G., Natalia Khvorostianov, Nelly Elias (2011). Appreciating the past, coping with the present: digital diaspora in later life. ECREA Diaspora, Migration and Media Section Conference 2011: "Continuities, complexitis and challenges in the field of Diaspora, migration and Media, NUI Maynooth, Ireland, 2-3 December.

Abstract: Immigration in later life is an extremely stressful life event. While coping with the normative challenges of aging, older immigrants also have to face the many difficulties of immigration. These may include, among others, social and cultural isolation, language constraints and poverty. Current studies suggest that the Internet may serve as an adaptive tool that helps immigrants to integrate into the new society, while simplifying contact with their country and culture of origin. There is also a significant amount of research demonstrating that the Internet may help older adults cope with stressful life events. Yet, no study so far has examined how using the Internet may facilitate coping with the challenges of immigration in later life. This study aimed at revealing the roles of the Internet for elderly immigrants in the case of Jewish immigrants from the Former Soviet Union (FSU) in Israel. For that purpose, in-depth interviews were conducted with 32 immigrants (15 women and 17 men) whose age ranged from 69 to 89 years and who have resided in Israel between 6 to 19 years. All interviewees, regardless of their age, gender, year of immigration, education and occupation, had used the Internet for the first time only after immigration to Israel. Even those who immigrated after 2000 had not owned a home computer in the FSU, while those who have used computers at work did not have Internet access. Despite being relatively new Internet users, interviewees indicated that they made an intensive and varied use of the Internet and that the Internet was a dominant medium in their lives, helping them to manage many life domains. Findings indicate that older immigrants who use the Internet practice, in fact, strategies of successful aging, which help them not only to cope with the challenges associated with aging, but also with the tremendous difficulties and losses posed by immigration. Similar to young immigrants, who were the first to discover the benefits of Digital Diaspora, they created such a diaspora for themselves. In this respect, many of their Internet uses were typical of immigrants of the younger age cohorts, who maintain online contacts with the homeland and with family and friends abroad. Other uses, however, were more characteristic of older immigrants, since they aimed to preserve their connection to the past, both the personal and the national. These Internet uses included participants' attempts to find digital traces of their personal biography as well as to collect materials related to the history of Jewish people on the territories of the USSR and the history of the prominent carriers of the Russian-Soviet culture. Thus, the interviewees searched on the Web for the old pictures of their hometown, for the testimonies of the Holocaust survivors, in parallel with reports about old movie stars, episodes from old Soviet films on YouTube and websites of the Russian museums. In doing so, they created a strong and coherent connection between their past and their current life in a new country, and gave it meaning.