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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Latvian Emigrants in the United States: Different Waves, Different Identities?

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AbstractThis chapter studies the relationships and interaction among the Latvian emigrants from different migration waves in the United States. It specifically examines reasons for the inability of the existing and politically and culturally active Latvian diaspora community in the United States to integrate newcomers from Latvia. The diaspora community is formed mostly of migrants who left Latvia after World War II. The research is based on a mix of two sources of information and methods – qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews with the ‘new’ Latvian emigrants in the United States in 2014, who began arriving there in 1991 and quantitative data analysis of The Emigrant Communities of Latvia survey. The study illustrates that the migrants from the most recent emigration wave distance themselves to a large extent from the previous migration wave. Additionally, the most recent migrants do not have strong social ties or active networks with Latvians back home and, therefore, cannot be considered as being a part of a transnational community, which is a characteristic of the previous Latvian migration wave. Instead, the migrants from the most recent wave base their belonging on the notion of having roots in Europe in terms of cultural heritage and identity. For this reason, they are to be considered as so-called ‘nomadic’ migrants, although this differs substantially from the way the concept is used in the academic literature so far – there is no return point back home, as they only look forward.