Chapter 1: Conceptualizing Immigrant Agency An Introduction -- Chapter 2: Post Soviet Immigrant Population Between the 1990s to 2000s -- Chapter 3: Personal Transitions amidst Shifting Societal Landscapes -- Chapter 4: Human Agency between Conceptual Morass and Mosaics -- Chapter 5: Agency through the Prism of Long Term Migration -- Chapter 6: Crafting the Methodological Framework -- Chapter 7: Multimethod Empirical Approach -- Chapter 8: Balancing Acts Self Identification and Identity Formations -- Chapter 9: CoMigrant Identity Frameworks Semantic Complexities and Perceptions -- Chapter 10: Language Use An Individual and Group Perspective -- Chapter 11: Language as a Norm and as a Deviation -- Chapter 12: Migrant Businesses and Post Soviet Migration -- Chapter 13: Nourishing Culinary Memories through Consumption -- Chapter 14: Scheherazade an Immigrant Dancing Group -- Chapter 15: Fostering Group Unity and Integration -- Chapter 16: Community Engagement and Networks -- Chapter 17: Immigrant Agency Theory Conceptual Foundations and Practical Implications.

Open Access

‘[A] response to the current calls in migration studies to democraticize and decolonize migration research and to abolish the hierarchy between the researcher (= citizen) and the researched (= migrant). Such an emancipatory intention resonates with the author’s methodological program to develop an ‘immigrant agency theory’ on the basis of Grounded Theory methodology by reconstructing ‘sayings’ and ‘doings’ around migrant agency ‘from below’.’ —Anna Amelina, Professor of Sociology, Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany This open access book explores the dynamics of human agency within the complex context of settlement-oriented immigration through an in-depth case study of immigrants from the former Soviet Union who embarked on their journey to Germany during the 1990s and early 2000s. Employing a transnational lens and an interpretive approach, the book presents a novel empirically grounded Immigrant Agency Theory. Bridging the realms of integration and transnationalism, the Immigrant Agency Theory is a multifaceted analytical tool encompassing representational aspects (identity formations and frameworks), expressive dimensions (language use, multilingual practices, and translanguaging), and operational facets (e.g., contrasting (non)economic actions as entrepreneurship and active leisure). These elements serve as mechanisms facilitating transition, engagement, resistance, and the expression of flexible ethnic boundary-making, cultural pluralism, and the maintenance of difference through auto-exoticism as exemplified by the studied population groups. This monograph is valuable for sociologists, migration scholars, social linguists, researchers of cultural studies and Eastern Europe interested in understanding the correlation between historical events and East-West European migration processes during the transition period of the Soviet and post-Soviet space. Tetiana Havlin is a sociologist, researcher, visiting professor and chair for Intercultural Studies at Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg, Germany. .

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