Research internship at Laboratory of Sociology in Education and Science
From the beginning of this academic year the Laboratory welcomes a new research intern – Marica Sharashenidze. She has recently earned her degree from Rice University in Houston, Texas. Marica majored in Sociology and minored in Medical studies. This year she came to the Laboratory of Sociology in Education and Science to conduct a research project focusing on second generation migrant students in Saint Petersburg schools. Marica found the Laboratory while looking for scientific papers on migrants and considered some of its English-language publications relevant. After that she asked D. A. Aleksandrov if there were opportunities to get a research internship in the Laboratory. We talked to Marica about how does it feel to be a sociologist in America and asked about her research plans in Russia.
About moving to Russia
My parents grew up in Russia: my dad is originally from Georgia, and my mom is Jewish, she is from Ukraine. But they both moved to Kazan when they were in their pre-teens. They met in med school in Russia before migrating to the United States. There is a pretty big language barrier between me and my parents. They do not speak English fluently, and I do not speak Russian fluently so sometimes we misunderstand each other. I would like to improve my Russian, in part to have less miscommunication.
About sociologists
When you are a sociologist people always say: “You will never get a job”. They joke about that all the time. But it is funny how they joke about it, because it is one of the most diverse fields. If you want to be in classes with not just straight white guys, you should take classes in sociology.
About “quant” and “qual” [slang for qualitative and quantitative sociology]
It’s pretty well-known that if you do a quantitative study you are more likely to get published. It is really hard to be published if you are a qualitative researcher unless your research is published as a book, but people write how many books during their lifetime, five? And to get that someone to ask you to publish your book you need to write a bunch of journal articles and journals are way less likely to publish research based on qualitative data. At least, that’s what I think, correct me if I am wrong.
About research
In University, I did like a couple mini-research projects. First it was an independent grant given by the Jewish Studies department and I wanted to study graffiti. I really got into sociology of space, so first I wanted to go to Mexico to look at graffiti there. But my parents won’t ever let me do that. So, I went to study graffiti in Tel-Aviv. I specifically looked at how one person can affect the culture of a larger space. It was a fun project.
About plans in Russia
I am studying interactions between different ethnicity students who are second-generation migrants in Saint-Petersburg schools. I think it’s important to understand whether social ties are being created at a young age. This is my opinion, correct me if I am wrong, but for Russians core ties are created when people are young and you carry those ties through your entire life. What I want to know, is whether these core ties are being created between students of different ethnicities. I also thought this project would be interesting because as of 2014 Russia had the second highest rate of transnational immigration in the world and it’s studied, but not to the extent immigration is studied in America. I am doing participant observation for the first three months and after that I am conducting interviews.
About Russian schools
Your schools are way nicer! My school did not look that good! I don’t know if it is just the first school I have been to, but I looked under the table and it was clean, there was nothing on the walls, no paintings or graffiti. I saw a ping-pong table and I was like: “How hasn’t anyone stolen anything from that table?”
The material was prepared by Ksenia Antoshko