Chapter 4 Integration Process of Ukrainian Immigrants
4.4 Political Integration
The political integration receives less attention in the literature than socio-economic and cultural dimensions. Successfully integrated immigrants are expected to have interest in the Czech political life, such as elections and have interest in Czech politics.
In this part of the interviews, the respondents were asked about their plans for naturalization, if they have not received Czech citizenship yet. The author asked about their interest in Czech politics and whether they vote. For comparison, the respondents were also asked, whether they are interested in Ukrainian politics. Finally, they were asked about participation in civic society organizations and NGOs.
Foreigners without citizenship cannot vote in the Czech Republic. There is no foreigner advising board in the Czech Republic, but many foreigners work in Integration Centers and NGOs.
The second generation of foreigners take part in discussion forums to discuss with government the problems of immigrants, especially the second generation of Vietnamese immigrants start to be politically active (Ministry of Interior 2015). There has been a discussion and to allow the permanent residence holders to vote at the local and regional level. In 2015, the government refused to give such right to foreigners.
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Interviewee G expressed interest in Czech politics, because they live in the Czech Republic and the political situation in the country influences them as well. Some respondents do not care about politics at all. Others admit that they follow the political situation in Ukraine more.
Interviewee K says, “I am more following Ukrainian politics, because I am worried about the situation there. I was growing up there, so I care about that.” It was obvious that many respondents had personal attachment to their homeland and worried about the situation there. It is important to add, that many respondents have parents and relatives in Ukraine, so they are worried about them and their safety.
Many of the interviewees have already received the Czech citizenship, especially since the double citizenship was allowed in 2014. Interviewee G explains the difficulty of getting the citizenship before,
Before 2014, it was necessary to give up Ukrainian citizenship in order to receive the Czech one. It wasn’t easy due to the bureaucracy back in Ukraine. The Ukrainian President had to sign the document to give up the citizenship and it cost money to for the document to get on the Presidents table. I have applied in 2014, so I didn’t have to give up Ukrainian citizenship, I am not sure about
the cost, but I know that it is pretty expensive.
The author expected that the majority of Ukrainians did not want to give up Ukrainian citizenship due to attachment to Ukraine, but it seems that Ukrainian bureaucracy also plays a role.
Interviewee G admitted that Ukrainian law does not allow double citizenship, so every Ukrainian,
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said, “I do not with to apply for the Czech citizenship, because I feel that having a permanent residence status is enough for me.” Due to her age she is not thinking about retirement yet and even admitted that she would love to spend her retirement in Ukraine.
Ukrainian diaspora in the Czech Republic is represented by several organizations, but one of the biggest is Ukrainian Initiative in the Czech Republic (UICR) (Luptak and Drbohlav 1999). The organization publishes a magazine Porogy, and is financially supported by the Czech government.
Besides the magazine Porogy, there is also a manazine Ukrajinsky zurnal and monthly newspaper Ukrgazeta (Krydova 2015). Ukrgazeta publishes job offerings as well. All magazines are published in Ukrainian language. Ukrainians are also united by the Church, namely the Czech Greek Catholic Church and the Czechoslovak Orthodox Church. The majority of respondents did not have interest in Ukrainian Initiative, except Interviewee O, “I used to be part of Ukrainian Initiative fifteen years ago. I was trying to finance them. But this organization is used to take money from the Czech government, but those money disappeared very quickly. After I understood that I have left this organization.” On the other hand, many Ukrainian immigrants admitted that they go to the church.
Interviewee A says, “The Greek Catholic Church is organizing many events to support Ukrainian culture and bring Ukrainian people together. Last time they have organized a concert. Ukrainian singers came to sing to both Ukrainian and Czechs. I have enjoyed it a lot.”
4.5 Attitudes of the Czech Society Towards Immigrants
Success of the integration also depends on the attitudes of the local population towards immigrants. The attitudes can be examined through surveys, interviews, and local media. The first research on this topic was conducted in 1993, when respondents were asked whether Czech citizens
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2010). Cizek (2010) pointed out that in that time the unemployment rate was 4.3 percent, which is relatively low, but respondents compared the situation in 1993 with the situation before the year 1989 (when the government has kept unemployment rate close to zero percent) and felt threatened by foreign labour competition.
In 1997, there was another study of the attitudes towards workers from the Western and the Eastern countries (Cizek 2010). The key findings were that the attitudes towards Western workers were more positive than the attitudes towards Eastern workers. There was plenty of stigma and stereotypes towards the workers from the developed and the developing countries. The outcome of the study was that Czechs prefer workers from the Western countries over the labour from the East.
41.9 percent had neutral attitudes towards the workers from the East, and 20.7 percent even had negative feelings.
The study conducted in 1999 found out that the 78 percent of respondents felt that employment of foreigners in the Czech firms was not necessary because there are enough Czech citizens available to do the job (Cizek 2010).
Gabal (1999, cited in Burbank 2001) pointed out the difficulty for Czech citizens to accept immigrants and their struggles to live with Roma minority. He divided foreigners into three categories. The first category were Americans, German, French, and other Western nationalities from the developed countries. This category was the most accepted by Czechs culturally. The second category were Slovaks, Czech immigrants, and Jews, this category was the least foreign to Czechs. The most unaccepted category were everyone else, people of different culture (Vietnamese, Arabs), race, developing countries, and post-Soviet countries. Ukrainians were also in the third
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survey studied the attitudes of populations from European countries towards immigrants and minorities. The results were measured by xenophobia index and the Czech Republic was in the middle of the spectrum. The post-Communist countries such as Lithuania, Slovakia or Poland showed the strongest levels of xenophobia. The Czech Republic had less xenophobic attitudes than post-Communist countries, but did worse than the Western Europe. The Czech Republic attitudes were similar to Russia and France and higher than Denmark or Sweden.
Burjanek (2001) also used the survey to find characteristics of a person more prone to xenophobia. The data from the survey complied with the other studies done on this topic. According to the data, a person is more likely to be xenophobic is older (over 50 years old), less educated, unsure, does not trust other people, has lower socioeconomic status, and has negative attitudes towards people from the developing countries.
A more recent study was conducted by Popov (2004). He did an experiment on discrimination of foreigners by the Czech firms and found out that not only the foreign nationals received fewer job interview offers than the Czech counterparts, but the firms discriminated based on nationality. He sent resumes to 132 Czech firms in the year of 2003. The results were that the Czech candidates received 22 job interviews (success rate of 16.7 percent), Bulgarian candidates received 9 invitations (6.82 percent success rate), and Russian/Ukrainian candidates received 3 invitations (2.27 percent success rate). When he increased qualifications of the candidates in the resumes, the Czech candidates received 20 percent more job interview invitation, while foreign candidates did not. Moreover, Russian/Ukrainian candidates received job interview invitation only from general consulting industry, and no response from finance and banking, engineering, or marketing industries, while Czech candidates had equal opportunities in all five chosen industries.
Popov (2004) has concluded that the employers most likely have discriminated based on nationality.
In 2013, CVVM (Center for Research of Public Opinion) conducted a study about the Czech
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nationals living in the Czech Republic for CVVM. The number of respondents were 1059 Czech citizens 15 years and older. The respondents rated Czechs and Slovaks are the most likable nationalities with 83 percents having positive opinion towards them. 53 percent of Czechs also rated Polish nationals well. The respondents felt neutral towards Bulgarians and Hungarian, and more negative towards Russians, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Serbians. Ukrainians and Romanians got mostly negative response with 13 percent felt favorable ratings. 51 percent of respondents stated negative feelings toward Ukrainians. The most negative feelings Czechs have towards Roma, with 78 percent having negative feelings towards them. The study also showed that respondents older that 60 years had negative attitudes towards German, young respondents had negative attitudes towards Vietnamese. High educated people showed more sympathy towards foreigners and rated other nationalities more positively.
Pribenska (2013) also contributed to the study of public opinion on immigrants for CVVM.
She did a research on what Czech society thinks of immigrant contribution to the Czech society.
According to the study, 58 percent of Czechs think that foreigners immigrating into the Czech Republic bring problems for the country. Interestingly, that the same respondents think that foreigners living in their area are not problematic (49 percent). The author also added that until 2009 the number of Czechs, who had negative feelings towards immigrants, was decreasing, but since 2011 there has been an increase in negative opinions towards foreigners. From the other studies it seems that the negativity towards foreigners increased because of financial crisis and increase of unemployment in the country, so locals started to feel more threatened by the immigrants due to the competition in the labour market. Pribenska (2013) added that higher
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68 percent of Czech citizens also believe that immigration increases unemployment, 67 percent that immigrants increase the occurrence of crime in the country, and 54 percent that immigrants bring health diseases (Pribenska 2013). Czech citizens feel reserved about the statements that immigrants contribute to the Czech society economically, culturally, and can help to solve the problem of aging population. However, most Czech do not believe that immigrants endanger their culture, probably because the number of immigrants in their country is still too low to have a negative impact on the Czech culture. The responses did not considerably differ from the previous years, so their opinions are stable.
In conclusion, the mentioned studies show that Czechs value their cultural homogeneity and feel reserved towards immigrants. They tend to prefer immigrants from the Western countries over the immigrant from the Eastern countries. They particularly have negative feelings toward Ukrainians. Another aspect is economic threat because Czechs also believe that immigrants take away employment opportunities. Those negative feelings raise during the economic hardships in the country. However, as the research on immigration shows, more educated Czechs have also more sympathy and positive attitudes towards foreigners.
MIPEX (2015) findings also point out that the Czech Republic public opinion is not so positive towards migration, as only 25 percent believe that immigrants would enrich the country economically and culturally.
The author also asked in the interviews about the attitudes of Czechs towards Ukrainians.
Interviewee P says, “In general, the attitudes of Czechs towards Ukrainians are good. But there is a group of Czechs that look down on Ukrainians as if Ukrainians is a lower sort of people.”
Interviewee Q agrees, “It is hard to integrate in the Czech Republic. The attitudes towards Ukrainians are not so good. We are not discriminated as much as in the 90s, but still many Czechs feel that they are higher level than Ukrainians.” Interviewee R confirms the research on the attitudes
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and to people from the Eastern Europe, because we are perceived us poor and lower level. The attitude to Germans and people from the Western Europe is much better, in my opinion.”
Interviewee G also remembers the 90s, when he arrived to the Czech Republic, “In the 90s, we were even not allowed to enter some bars, because those bars were just for Czechs.” Interviewee L, despite coming to the country at the young age, admits, “If Ukrainian wants to integrate into Czech society, he should accept the rules of this society and be prepared that he is not that welcomed in this country. He needs to work hard to show that we are normal people and the nation.” Interviewee Q also adds, “The attitudes of Czechs have improved though those 20 years I am here. We started to treat Czechs nicer and Czechs have started to treat us better as well.”
4.6 Conclusion
This chapter describes the process of the integration of Ukrainians in the Czech Republic.
The integration is examined from three dimensions: socio-economic, cultural, and political. The research on the attitudes of the Czechs towards immigrants, and especially Ukrainians is also discussed. The research shows that Czechs feel uneasy about growing rates of immigration to the Czech Republic, especially from the post-Soviet countries. However, the respondents feel that there has been an improvement in attitudes since the 90s.
The interviews the author conducted in Prague are used to enrich the research on this topic.
Ukrainians, who have been living in the Czech Republic for more than 10 years, could give meaningful insights on the reality of Ukrainian immigration. Their experience could be meaningful
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integration was something that they had to manage themselves, because there were no integration programs or Czech language courses. Nowadays, there are resources for immigrants, that they could use, in order to integrate successfully.
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Chapter 5 Conclusion
The purpose of this thesis is to study the integration process of Ukrainian immigrants in the Czech Republic. Since the split of the Czechoslovakia in 1993, Ukrainians have been coming to the Czech Republic as economic migrants to work mostly in low-skilled jobs and nowadays, Ukrainians are the largest immigrant community in the country. It is highly possible that the numbers of Ukrainians will continue to grow due to the difficult political and economic situation in Ukraine. So far, Ukrainians have been working in their “niche” sectors such as construction or cleaning services. However, in the recent years, there has been a discussion that Ukrainians could satisfy the need for the lower medical personnel in Czech hospitals. There has been long term lack of lower medical personnel in the country due to unattractive pay. Many Czech nurses left for a better pay to the other EU countries, such as Austria or Germany, or changed their career. Several Czech hospitals have already recruited nurses from Ukraine as a trial and it is possible that in the future Ukrainians could get new job opportunities in the Czech Republic (Srajbrova 2016).
The Czech government usually does not have problems with Ukrainian immigrants, because there is a low unemployment rate between Ukrainians and most of them do not take any social benefits from the government. The only question remains illegal immigration. The actual statistics of Ukrainians, who stay in the country illegally, are unavailable, but there is a dependance between
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immigration as a whole does not raise crime rates. The majority of immigrant illegal activity is regarding visa overstay and illegal employment.
The Czech immigration policy has been changing since 1993 following the Czech labour market needs, and it continues to be rather restrictive and it is difficult for the foreigners to settle down in the country. The Czech integration policy expects assimilation of immigrants with the Czech society and current efforts focus on the knowledge of the Czech language and better orientation of foreigners in the Czech society. An example of government efforts are Integration centers across the country and Czech language courses.The government recognizes the need to change the health insurance policy for the foreigners and considers to give voting right at the local level to permanent residence holders.
In this thesis, the author has focused on integration process of Ukrainians and came to the following conclusions. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the rates of Ukrainian emigration continue to be high. Besides permanent emigration, temporary and illegal emigration is also common and many families in Ukraine rely on income from abroad, which made Ukrainian economy and society dependent on the migration and remittances. The majority of income earned abroad is invested in Ukrainian economy, especially housing market, education, and personal use.
Thanks to the emigration and remittances, Ukrainian middle-class was created. Money earned abroad is rarely invested in small-scale business due to high corruption and Ukrainian bureaucracy.
Temporary and illegal migrants do not take effort to integrate in the new society and learn the language, because they are unsure, whether they can stay in the country, and they believe that they will return to Ukraine in the future. However, many of the temporary migrants stay abroad permanently, because it is difficult for them to find employment in Ukraine and to reintegrate in Ukrainian society.
The Czech Republic is a homogenous country with an easily defined mainstream culture, so
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assimilate in the country, the longer they stay and it may take even three to four generations to see no differences between the major population and immigrants. The Ukrainians, who live in the Czech Republic for a long period of time, have already assimilated to some degree. The first generation of immigrants is employed in their “niche” sectors such as construction. Based on the interviews the author conducted, the first generation is able to communicate in Czech language to some extend; they can speak, but have problems with Czech grammar and writing. The second generation most likely will be proficient in the Czech language and will not have problems with documents, so they will most likely have more employment opportunities. As for the cultural integration, Ukrainians still follow Ukrainian traditions and the majority of them are Christian Orthodox, so it is possible that the second generation is going to follow Ukrainian traditions as well because of religion. In this thesis, the author used the dimensions of integration proposed by Entzinger and Biezeveld (2003): socio-economic, cultural, and political. The attitudes of the local population towards immigrants were also explored. The idea that assimilation has dimensions was proposed by Gordon in 1964. Entzinger and Biezeveld proposed dimensions that could be used as benchmarks for integration for the European Union member countries including the Czech Republic.
In terms of socio-economic integration, most of Ukrainians are employed and are not discriminated in pay, but they continue to work in own “niche” sectors such as construction or cleaning services. Rarely, they undergo qualification courses or receive training in the Czech
In terms of socio-economic integration, most of Ukrainians are employed and are not discriminated in pay, but they continue to work in own “niche” sectors such as construction or cleaning services. Rarely, they undergo qualification courses or receive training in the Czech