Russian-speaking (but not Russian) mothers in Finland : positioning ethnolinguistic identities in family language policy talk

Abstract

Anti-Russian sentiment or ‘Russophobia’ has been on the rise around the world since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine (Washington Post, 2022). Negative attitudes towards Russians and the Russian language can potentially influence the desires and practices of Russian-speaking parents in using the language with their children in contexts outside of Russia. This article examines the language ideologies and family language policies of a diverse group of Russian-s peaking mothers in Finland before the Ukraine war. Most of the mothers noted in interviews that some form of Russophobia (e.g. perceived negative attitudes, cutting off funding for Russian programmes, and/or their own stereotypes about Russians) influenced their own use of Russian in certain contexts, their perceptions of their Russian-speaking children, and/or their language education decisions. This article explores an understudied area of family language policy, that is how xenophobia and/or racism in the context of conflict (in this case after the annexation of Crimea in 2014) influence a minority migrant group's use of their home language abroad. By situating mothers’ family language planning and ideologies in the larger sociohistorical context, this paper contributes to an expanded view of family external or non-linguistic factors in family language policy.