Discussion
The forced and unprepared migration of Russian citizens after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and especially after the mobilization in September 2022, led many families with children to search for ways to continue their school education. Many families therefore looked for quick and often temporary solutions in a context of uncertainty, later making new decisions once their situation became more stable. Their choice of schools was not, therefore, typical of parents’ choices in their home country, which are usually shaped by class and other socioeconomic characteristics. At the same time, it was also different from other migration-related schooling experiences, which often involve integration into the host country’s education system, as well as processes of in-group cohesion and “downward assimilation” (Portes and Zhou 1993).
This paper argues that, after the initial hectic decisions following migration, Russian migrants with high educational backgrounds returned to school choice as a “middle-class strategy” (Ball 1993). Based on interviews with parents and teachers, as well as participant observation, the paper analyzes parents’ school choices and the offers available from local schools in Armenia (both private and state-run) aimed at newly arrived migrants.
The results show patterns that resemble private schooling among lifestyle migrants (Korpela 2016). Some parents chose state Russian-speaking schools or classes that existed prior to the migration influx to Armenia. In countries where the Russian language holds prestige (such as in Central Asia and the South Caucasus), opportunities to study in Russian remain popular among locals. Private schools’ offers are also often based on pre-existing infrastructure—school buildings, teachers, programs, and accreditation—of English- or Russian-speaking institutions. Another option has been the emergence of newly created schools organized by the migrants themselves, with ad hoc staff, programs, and facilities.
References
Ball, S. J. (1993). Education Markets, Choice and Social Class: the market as a class strategy in the UK and the USA. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 14(1), 3–19.Korpela, M. (2016). A (sub)culture of their own? Children of lifestyle migrants in Goa, India. Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, 25(4), 470-488.
Portes. A. and M. Zhou (1993) The New Second Generation: Segmented Assimilation and its Variants.
The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science,
530(1), 74-96.
