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Going West: Czech Immigration to California (1960-1970)
West, Anna ; Wohlmuth Markupová, Jana (advisor) ; Krátká, Lenka (referee)
The construction of human identity involves various aspects of self-definition, often involving an interplay between ethnic, national, and personal identities. In the case of emigrants, their self-concepts about their identities can undergo a profound transformation when they leave their home country. This oral history research project studies the experiences of emigration, arrival, integration, and identity among Czech immigrants in California who emigrated from Czechoslovakia in the 1960s. While contemporary research has centered primarily on Czechs in New York, Illinois, Nebraska, and Texas, where large Czech communities have historically existed, this study intends to fill a gap in our knowledge about Czechs who settled in California, of which less is known. Through oral history interviews with five narrators, this study examines their decisions to emigrate; their experiences of arrival and integration in California; their participation in the Czech community in California; and their perspectives on their identities before and after the fall of communism in Czechoslovakia in 1989. The presence of transnational identities and behaviors was found among the narrators, whereby they existed in social worlds that spanned their home country, Czechoslovakia (and the Czech Republic after 1993), and...
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