Four generations, three languages, one island: Language shift and identity negotiation among Sakhalin Koreans

This article investigates language shift and identity negotiation among four generations of Sakhalin Koreans, drawing on 44 life-history interviews conducted in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. The study aims to reveal the patterns and strategies used by speakers of highly endangered languages via complex analysis of the contexts of unbalanced bilingualism. It examines how Korean, Russian, and Japanese have accumulated distinct ideological meanings across a century of displacement, colonial rule, Soviet assimilation and post-Soviet transformation. The analysis demonstrates that language shift in this community does not follow a linear path toward Russian, but instead reflects patterned strategies developed within families to maintain heritage connections while adapting to institutional and social pressures. First-generation multilingual repertoires illustrate the historical layering of linguistic resources; second-generation speakers navigate the closure of Korean-medium schools by developing ‘kitchen Korean’ as a functional domestic code; third-generation speakers rely on symbolic and receptive ties to Korean; and fourth-generation speakers engage with heritage largely through popular culture and transnational mobility aspirations. Across these trajectories, identity emerges as a negotiated and historically situated process rather than a fixed category. Speakers draw on available linguistic and cultural resources to position themselves within overlapping layers of belonging (ethnic, regional, national, and transnational). The findings highlight the durability of heritage identities even under conditions of linguistic assimilation and contribute to broader debates on multilingualism, diaspora identity, and the long-term dynamics of language maintenance and loss in minority communities. The study contributes to understanding how identity negotiation operates in contexts marked by multiple displacement experiences and shifting political arrangements.