ISSN 2300-1682

Central and Eastern European Migration Review

Issue edited by: Yana Leontiyeva

Editorial

Extract  

This issue of Central and Eastern Europe Migration Review (CEEMR) is dedicated to migratory flows from one of the largest source countries for the European Union (EU). Almost a decade ago, Düvell (2006) even referred to Ukraine as Europe’s Mexico. Ukraine indeed seems to have the second-largest migration corridor in the world, the US–Mexico corridor being the largest (Migration Policy Centre 2013). This comparison, however, refers more to the migration corridor between Ukraine and Russia. Estimates of the migration flows between these two countries are really impressive, though they vary greatly between fewer than 100 000 and more than 3.5 million (Migration Policy Centre 2013). One of the explanations for the great disparity between these estimates is the lack of migration regulations (it is a visa-free regime for Ukrainians in Russia) and significant undocumented migration.1 When it comes to migration from Ukraine to the EU, the general pattern and the numbers seem to be different. There is no doubt that estimates of Ukrainian migrants in Europe might also be somewhat imprecise, due to the lack of a fully standardised definition and to the specifics of migrant statistics in member-states. Notwithstanding significant undocumented migratory movements, due to its visa policies, the EU obviously has more instruments for regulating and registering the inflow of Ukrainian migrants. Here the estimates from different sources vary at around 1 million. According to Eurostat (2011, 2014) Ukrainian nationals currently represent the fifth-largest migrant group in the EU (after Turks, Moroccans, Chinese and Indians). Eurostat (2014) puts the total number of Ukrainian residents currently living in the EU as high as 634 851 persons. Given the high numbers of Ukrainian nationals (and the Ukrainian-born) living in Europe, the dearth of academic books and monothematic issues of scientific journals focused on Ukrainian migration is striking.

Articles

Abstract  

This article examines the current state of Ukraine’s policy towards emigration. The authors seek to transcend the state-oriented approach, highlighting the role that diaspora and non-governmental organisations played in accelerating the process of policy formulation in this area. Explanations are provided for the Ukrainian state’s failure to actively implement a consistent policy on emigration. A historical overview of the legal and institutional developments shows that the issue did not have much priority during the first two decades of the country’s independence. It emerges that external pressure from the EU and non-state actors was needed to elaborate a set of guarantees for Ukrainian emigrants. Since 2011 a series of legislative initiatives have been launched, whose effectiveness is in doubt as long as the country does not overcome the larger challenges of territorial integrity and financial stability. The authors argue that for the Ukrainian policy towards emigration to be effective, opportunities need to be created for the permanent consultation and involvement of diaspora and non-governmental organisations.

Abstract  

The article explores the connections between social, political, economic and ethnic processes in the Ukrainian-Romanian borderland. The aim is to describe how borderlanders work out strategies to overcome the contradictions inherent in the state border. The study is based on ethnographical fieldwork (participant and non-participant observation) conducted in a small town, a former mining centre, in the region of Transcarpathia in Western Ukraine. I point to the political changes in the late 20th and early 21st centuries (the collapse of the Soviet bloc and Ukraine neighbours’ integration in the European Union) and their impact on local social life. The crucial aspect, linked to the town’s geographical setting, is the role of the state border, which changes in accordance with the political changes in the region and in Europe. First, the collapse of the communist dictatorships in Ukraine and Romania resulted in the opening of the border and an increase in cross-border contacts. However, in the first decade of the 21st century, Romania tightened its passport and visa regulations for Ukrainian citizens. Another factor is the complete disintegration of the mining industry and local labour market, resulting in significant changes in occupational patterns and a greater role of the border in respect of labour migration and shuttle trade. I also acknowledge local ethnic composition and argue that the use of ethno-national symbolism, languages, relations between ethnic minorities and their ‘external homelands’ constitute an inherent element of the strategies to overcome the lack of regular employment and poverty.

Abstract  

The paper deals with the importance of neighbourhood ties in the social networks of circular migrants. While existing research shows that social networks constitute a crucial element in the process of circular migration, not much is known about the extent to which these networks are territorialised. The paper discusses this issue by analysing the case of Ukrainian migrants in Warsaw and its suburbs, who are close to the receiving society in both cultural and geographic terms and thus make this group a unique case compared to immigrants travelling to Europe from more distant places. The analyses are based on data collected in a survey on Ukrainian migrants carried out in 2010 by the Centre of Migration Research, University of Warsaw, with the help of Respondent Driven Sampling (RDS). The studied sample consists of 342 respondents with different duration of migration from Ukraine to Poland. The paper argues that neighbourhood ties do not play an important role in the social capital and mobility patterns of Ukrainian circular migrants. The social relations of migrants are formed through ethnic and kinship ties, which are not related to a specific local area. The analyses also confirm earlier findings which show that Ukrainian migrants do not tend to concentrate spatially in the Warsaw metropolitan area, but which do point to the existence of small ethnic clusters. However, these seem to be determined by structural factors such as the availability of flats rather than individual preferences to live close to co-ethnics, which altogether suggests that there is a limited potential for local community formation among Ukrainian migrants.

Abstract  

The aim of the article is to provide a brief overview of current labour migration from Ukraine to the Czech Republic and to explore the degree to which Ukrainian labour migrants utilise their skills on the Czech labour market. The analysis, using internal statistical data from the Czech Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs and evidence from specific migrant surveys, is focused on the relationship between the formal education of economically active Ukrainian migrants and their position on the Czech labour market, and the extent to which there is an educational–occupational mismatch. The article analyses the factors that might influence the match between jobs and formal education and the position of Ukrainian migrants in the labour market. Analysis of the educational background of Ukrainian respondents does not seem to support the popular stereotype of the average Ukrainian as a university-educated construction-site worker or a cleaner, primarily due to the fact that the Czech Republic does not only attract well-educated Ukrainian migrants. Nevertheless, a comparison of the educational and occupational structures of Ukrainian migration does provide evidence of a significant waste of human capital.

Abstract  

This article investigates the phenomenon of Ukrainian migrant women employed in the domestic and care sector in Italy. The analysis is based on a broad doctoral research carried out both in Ukraine and in Italy between 2005 and 2007. In particular, I investigate the subjective perception of downward mobility and how migrant women face this process of social devaluation and respond to it, taking into account that, in the case of Ukrainian female migration, the social skidding produced by migration goes hand in hand with the erosion of social and professional identity as experienced in their origin country during the 1990s. Thus, in order to comprehend the complexity of migration experiences it is necessary to analyse the migrants' whole life trajectories. The main results of the article are that Ukrainian migrant women give meaning to the process of devaluation by viewing it as an interlude in their life and as a sacrifice that serves to improve their families’ upward social mobility. Furthermore, in order to mitigate the social skidding and the asymmetrical relationships that characterise domestic work, they prefer to personalise the relationship with their employers and to avoid working for low educated and working class people. Finally, Ukrainian domestic workers react to the homogenisation engendered by migration by differentiating themselves both from other foreign nationals employed in the same sector, and from the ‘rough mass’ of their fellow countrywomen.

Abstract  

In recent years, the concept of transnationalism has become one of the main analytical tools used to assess the mobility patterns of Central and Eastern European populations. This work studies the transnational activities of Ukrainian immigrants in Spain. It examines three areas of transnational behaviour: travelling to the country of origin, the frequency of non-direct contact with the communities of origin and remittances. Our objective is to examine how gender, legal status and type of family unit (multilocal/non-multilocal) affect the frequency and extent of transnational activities. Most of the statistical data presented in this article come from the National Immigrant Survey (ENI-2007) conducted by the National Institute of Statistics (Spain). The study confirms that family ties play a crucial role in establishing and maintaining links between countries of origin and destination. It also reveals that the legal status of Ukrainian immigrants in Spain has a great impact on patterns of transnational behaviour. In this sense, it is evident that institutional factors must be included in analyses of migratory processes from a transnational perspective.

Abstract  

In a short period of time, Ukrainians became the second largest foreign community living in Portugal. Without historical ties linking the two countries, the ‘migration industry’ as well as positive feedback and assistance provided through pioneers’ social networks were decisive for the constitution and rapid expansion of the flow. However it slowed down in only few years and the economic crisis affecting Portugal since 2008 has introduced new limits to a possible future expansion. The goal of the paper is to provide insights with respect to the evolution of the flow, particularly looking at mechanisms of assistance and feedback provided and received within social networks, including the role of the ‘migration industry’. We explored quantitative and qualitative data collected through questionnaires applied to 306 Ukrainians and interviews conducted with 31 Ukrainians in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area in 2011 and 2012. The research confirms the importance of assistance received through social networks at different stages of the preparation of the move, upon arrival and throughout the settlement process in Portugal. We conclude that negative opinions on the present economic opportunities in Portugal have replaced initial positive perceptions about labour market opportunities and this information is being transmitted through social networks to Ukrainians back in Ukraine. We suggest that the significant decrease of the inflow can probably be explained by negative feedback and a more limited willingness to assist the migration of others. Future trends in the migratory flow of Ukrainian citizens to Portugal as well as the permanence of these immigrants in the country are uncertain. On the one hand, migrants are struggling to live through the crisis, while the recent social upheaval in Ukraine pushes them to leave.

Book Reviews

Extract  

While denouncing the ‘toxic context of high emotion and little knowledge’ surrounding the area of migration policy, Paul Collier urges his audience, including policy-makers, migration scholars and experts, to learn the real effects about migration as a social fact, rather than being led by value-based judgements. The long list of his publications culminates with his most recent book in a new research field, marking for the first time the territory of migration scholars and policy-makers. Exodus. Immigration and Multiculturalism in the 21st Century is an extension of his previous work, The Bottom Billion, the title of which refers to the number of people ‘trapped’ in extremely poor countries, the poorest in those countries and in the world. The bottom billion of the world’s poorest people are not the migrants we see among us in Western societies, because the poverty afflicting these poorest people is so extreme as to decouple their hopes of better lives ‘abroad’ from realistic opportunities to actually flee elsewhere. Collier, however, emphasises that the emigration of those poor who do make it to better societies, usually referring to Europe and the USA, has a number of effects on the poorest left behind; it is indeed of primary moral as well as social and economic concern whether these effects are good or bad. It is this empirical observation which triggers Collier’s engagement in his latest book, which presents a wider analysis of the social phenomenon of international migration from poor, underdeveloped and developing countries to Western affluent democracies. The question of whether migration is good or bad is not the right question to ask, he argues. We need to ask to what extent migration is ideal and how fast the international movement of people should be taking place. When it comes to the issue of international migration, he argues, immigration policies set by host states ought to weigh the interests, in terms of the social and economic costs and benefits to the indigenous population primarily, against the interests of migrants and those left behind as well.

Extract  

Recent scholarly debates in Europe have become preoccupied with the effects of increased ethnic diversity on social relations, trust and social participation. It has been widely investigated, if and how ethnic diversity impacts the quality of urban and neighbourhood contacts between people of different origins. Particularly, the question whether the increase in ethnic diversification leads to ‘hunkering down’ of social capital (Putnam 2007) or ‘erodes’ trust (Stolle, Soroka, Johnston 2008) could be regarded as a starting point of a dynamic academic discussion in many European countries on so called ‘diversity effects’ at the neighbourhood or local community levels. Here, Merlin Schaeffer’s book Ethnic Diversity and Social Cohesion. Immigration, Ethnic Fractionalization and Potentials for Civic Action arrives as a comprehensive review of to-date debates and methods, it also brings diverse, often contradictory arguments together, and points to new research directions.