Chapter 3 Ukrainian Immigrants in the Czech Republic
3.3 The Impact of Ukrainian Migration
Ukrainian immigrants are often looked down upon at home, because the Ukrainian society also has stereotypes towards migrants (Fedyuk 2006). The most common stereotypes are that it is easy to earn money abroad and that women migrants are caught in immoral behavior. Migrants are blamed for betraying their country and leaving their children behind. The Ukrainian government also shows little interest in “zorobitchany”. This lack of interest in its own citizens could be explained by the fact that most immigrants stayed abroad illegally and did not take part in Ukrainian elections, so they were not a group of interest for Ukrainian politicians. In the recent years, the situation has changed and Ukrainian politicians paid more attention to the struggles of Ukrainian
“zarobitchany”, especially during elections (Trlifajova 2009). For example, the attitudes towards migrants influenced the Presidential election in 2004. In 2003, President Kuchma in one of his speeches called Ukrainian female migrants working in Italy “prostitutes” (Fedyuk 2006). Such attitude towards Ukrainian migrants from the government was unacceptable for the Western regions of Ukraine, who actually migrated to Italy and other European countries. On the other hand, the opposition led by Yuschenko called emigration a tragedy of Ukraine, and his got more support by the Western regions (Fedyuk 2006).
It is hard for immigrants to reintegrate into Ukrainian society after returning back home, especially to find a job, because the working experience earned abroad is not counted. The majority of returning immigrants are not interested to work in construction or doing other job they did abroad. Those jobs are paid much less in Ukraine and are not prestigious. It is an interesting that a
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Ukrainian migrant seems to accept working as a domestic helper abroad, but in Ukraine he perceives such job as a drop in his social status (Fedyuk 2006).
Pirozhdov’s (2006) research also showed that migrations has its costs such as losing professional qualifications, psychological stress for the migrant and his family. Migrants are also not informed about the working conditions abroad. Some migrants did not have health insurance because they were working illegally. The majority lived in very modest housing conditions, and some even lived in the train stations. Hard working conditions destroy migrants’ health, therefore, it is hard to work in such conditions permanently.
Besides earning income, the labour migration also brings a major social impact on Ukrainian society. 1+1 TV Channel (A major TV channel in Ukraine) shot a documentary ATM Woman (author Akim Galimov, directed by Ganna Yarovenko) (Ukraine Today 2015). The documentary tells stories of Ukrainian migrant women, who work in Italy as caretakers for the elderly, while their families and children are left behind in Ukraine. They are emigrating to improve their family’s economic and living conditions, and to give their children a better future by paying for their college eduction, but in the end, they become so alienated from their children that those women are perceived only as ATM machines. They come back to Ukraine rarely because of the costs of visiting home, because they cannot leave their jobs, or because they work abroad illegally, but they send money and gifts regularly. Children often stay with grandparents, who do not have the same authority for them as their own parents. They also miss their mothers, and mothers cannot see them growing up. The stories in the documentary are heartbreaking. In the end, children get used to not having parents around, and receiving money, so they do not want their parents to come back. And
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are not sufficient to live abroad with the whole family. Children also do not want to migrate abroad because they enjoy their life in Ukraine. It is not uncommon that children get used to life without parents and do not want them to come back home, because they want their parents to continue to send them money.
Those impacts are the ones Ukrainian society still needs to resolve. Because many immigrants understand now the price of family separation, those, who can afford to bring children abroad, are trying to do so. The author has interviewed a husband and a wife who work in the Czech Republic together and raising a 5 year old daughter, who was born in the Czech Republic (Interviewee B and D). Their daughter is going to the Czech kindergarten and is fluent in Czech language. However, during the interview, they said that they have a 16 year old daughter living in Ukraine with a grandmother. Two sisters rarely see each other. They are just planning to bring their older daughter to the Czech Republic, but they also admit that their older daughter does not want to leave Ukraine anymore.
3.4 Conclusion
This chapter has introduced the issue of Ukrainian migration with the focus on Ukrainian immigrants and their life in the Czech Republic. The chapter has introduced the statistics of Ukrainian migration, the reasons of high emigration rates from Ukraine, and the impact of migration on Ukrainian society. Since the collapse of Soviet Union, Ukrainian economic and political situation stays difficult, which pushes many Ukrainians to look for employment opportunities abroad. It is common for one family member to migrate and send back remittances to support his family back in Ukraine. When spouses migrate together, children often stay behind in Ukraine with grandparents, and become “social orphans”. The majority of temporary migrants invest the earned money back to Ukraine, but they rarely open businesses due to high corruption.
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Migrants, who stay abroad for a long period of time, often have difficulties to reintegrate into Ukrainian society, and in the end, they return abroad.
Ukrainian temporary workers arrived to the Czech Republic in the 90s to work in construction and other unskilled jobs. Although the majority of Ukrainian immigration in the Czech Republic was considered temporary, the recent studies and statistics show that the number of Ukrainians staying in the Czech Republic permanently increases and Ukrainians are becoming the largest diaspora in the country. Therefore, it is important to research how Ukrainian community is integrating in the Czech society. In Chapter 4, the author would be examining more closely the integration of the Ukrainian community from the socio-economic, cultural, political dimensions.
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Chapter 4
Integration Process of Ukrainian Immigrants
This chapter focuses on the integration process of Ukrainian immigrants using the dimensions of integration, as proposed by Entzinger and Biezeveld (2003). In Chapter 4, the author examines the integration process of Ukrainian immigrants based on three dimensions: socio-economic, cultural, and political. The materials of the interviews conducted during the author’s stay in Prague in December-January 2016/17 will be used to enrich the current research done on integration and introduce the views of migrants who have personally experienced the struggles of immigration. Also, the attitudes of the Czech society towards immigrants will be introduced because the integration process is more successful, if the local society is welcoming to migrants.
The attitudes will be evaluated based on the Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX) and the results of local opinion polls and surveys.
4.1 Integration Process Overview
Integration is a process, where immigrants and their children get used to the new environment in several dimensions: cultural, economic, social, and political, and at the same time the major society is getting used or changing in response to immigration as well (Ellis and Almgren 2009, cited in Bernard and Mikesova 2014). According to this definition, integration is a multidimensional process that mitigates the differences between the major society and immigrants across several dimensions. Many researchers choose to combine social and economic integration
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into one dimension and use three dimensions of integration: socioeconomic, cultural and political.
In this chapter, the author studied the integration process based on three dimensions as well.
So far, the research on Ukrainian migration is generalized and does not take into account internal differences inside the Ukrainian immigrant group, such as differences in socio-economic status or education level (Fedyuk and Kindler 2016). The second generation of migrants is also not well researched yet. Most studies tend to focus on the migration of women and the question of remittances. On the other hand, the research on the impact of high numbers of emigration from Ukraine is still missing.
The majority of statistics for this chapter come from the Czech Ministry of Interior Migration Report (2015) and Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX). The index will be used to compare how the Czech Republic is doing in comparison to other developed countries. According to the Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX), the Czech Republic got a 23rd place out of 38 countries based on its integration policies in 2015. MIPEX measures integration policies in the EU Member States, the United States, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway, Turkey, Iceland, Japan, and South Korea based on 167 indicators such as political participation, family reunion, labour market mobility, education, health, anti-discrimination, and others. The index gives a summary on labour market mobility, family reunion, education, health, political participation, permanent residence, access to nationality, and anti-discrimination efforts.
MIPEX (2015) also concluded that the immigrants in the Czech Republic, in comparison to the other countries studied had less access to quality jobs, training, citizenship, and the law against discrimination, because still few people in the Czech Republic report discrimination, when the data
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4.2 Socio-economic integration
The socioeconomic integration receives more attention in the literature than the other dimensions of integration (Bernard and Mikesova 2014). The focus of socio-economic integration is to be independent financially and being able to survive in the new country without the help of the government in form of social benefits. The socio-economic integration also focuses on the difference between the job position and education. Successfully integrated immigrant can compete at the local labour market and receive a job position that corresponds with his educational level.
In this section, the author has asked the respondents about their employment, housing quality, income level, education, and the language ability.
According to MIPEX data (2015), a relatively low number of immigrants (18,5 percent) are unemployed, but at the same few immigrants have access to training and social benefits and get more qualified jobs. Based on the data of Ministry of Interior (2015), 41 847 Ukrainians have access to the Czech labour market and 22 786 Ukrainians have a business license in the Czech Republic. The non-EU citizens have even harder procedures to have their diplomas and experience recognized and use them to find a qualified job. Besides complicated procedures, a construction worker with Doctoral degree in Physics from Lviv, stated another barrier to the get the diploma recognized, “I didn't have time to think about education, recognition of diploma because all the time I needed money. Now I am 54 years old and its too late” (Interviewee E).
Relatively few immigrants receive some kind of social benefits such as child or housing support (Drbohlav et al 2009). Most receivers of benefits come from Slovakia, because 13.9 percent of Slovaks in the Czech Republic receive some form of social benefits and they make up 52.4 percent of all foreigners receiving social benefits (Drbohlav et al 2009). The Ukrainians the author has interviewed generally felt offended by the question on social benefits because they felt it is
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shameful to received social benefits, when they are able to earn for the living. Interviewee G, a construction leader, who lives in the Czech Republic for 20 years, says, “Ukrainians are not used to take social benefits, we feel it is embarrassing to get benefits when we are able to work.”
Interviewee O, an owner of a small company in the construction sector, adds, “The social benefit system is very liberal in the Czech Republic. People spend more time to get money from the state rather than start thinking how to earn those money. It goes as far as a couple with three children is not getting married because a single mother would get more social benefits for the kids.”
Drbohlav et al. (2009) points out that the most significant problem is health insurance, because not all foreigners residing in the Czech Republic are qualified for the public health insurance, some need to rely on private insurance companies, whose coverage is not as complete as national health insurance program. It is also important to add that illegal workers do not have any insurance and Interviewee G admitted, “Illegal immigrants did not have health insurance, so it happened that they run away from the hospital after they have received care because they had no money to pay.” This caused worse treatment of Ukrainian workers by hospital staff. Interviewee P, who also works in construction, added, “Czech hospitals discriminate against people with a different insurance than Czech National Health Insurance because private insurance may not cover all medical expenses. I have encountered the nurses and doctors, who refused to treat a Ukrainian worker, because he did not have Czech insurance.”On the other hand, another respondent said that from her experience, immigrants with Czech National Health Insurance, who speak Czech well, are treated nicely (Interviewee N).
High education immigrants are 2.5 times more likely to have a job below their education
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looking for an immediate financial return and are not willing to invest in human capital, such as language learning or obtaining a degree, and not because they are discriminated by local employers.
Interviewee N confirmed this, “When people come here, they do not expect they would stay here for a longer period of time, so it does not make sense to spend money on education and courses in the Czech Republic. They are trying to make money and go back to Ukraine as soon as possible.”
Kogan (2011) also concludes in his study that social networks and cultural adaptation also plays a role in receiving higher skilled employment. It is questionable, whether immigrants have those social contacts and connections to find a better employment. Economic immigrants might not have financial resources to invest in receiving additional education, thus staying in low skilled jobs to have their bills paid. As for the family reunification, the Czech Republic was most criticized on the condition that non-EU sponsors cannot be reunited if their receive certain benefits such as unemployment support, child or social benefits, and also on the 250 percent rise of application fees in 4 years since 2010 to 2014, which will make it harder for vulnerable groups to reunite (MIPEX 2015).
Based on the interviews, it seems that Ukrainian men indeed are employed in construction sector. Interviewee B, a construction worker, explained that, “Most Ukrainians work in construction because in other sectors more documents are needed and there is not an interest to employ foreigners”. His wife Interviewee D, who works as a cleaning lady, adds, “Our people do not have a choice when looking for employment. We take any job available.”Ukrainian women the author has interviewed are mostly working in cleaning services, with some exceptions of women, who have received professional training in the Czech Republic. The respondents admit that their first job was very hard. Interviewee D says,
My first job was very hard, I worked as a cleaning lady in a hospital and worked 16 hours a day.
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there for 2 years and had to leave due to health problems. One day, my colleague I were sent to work in the part of the hospital with infectious disease. We didn’t know and no one told us that we could not go inside that area without protective clothes. We weren’t given a mask or protective gloves. I am not sure it is because we did not understand at first or they did not care about us because we were foreigners. Soon after, I started to cough pretty badly and my husband got scared and told me to leave that job.
Interviewee H was a kindergarten teacher in Ukraine, but coming to the Czech Republic also worked in a hospital as a cleaning lady, ”My first job in the Czech Republic was cleaning at the hospital. It was very hard. Commuting was exhausting. I could not have thought that I could clean the places full of blood. It was hard for me to do it at first, but people get used to everything”. After staying in the Czech Republic for more than 10 years, Interviewee D and Interviewee H still work as cleaning ladies, but in private homes.
Some female respondents got a different kind of job. Interviewee R got a certificate and works as a manicurist. She explains why many Ukrainian women choose not to study: “Our Ukrainian women do not want to study. They are used to low skilled jobs. They are afraid to speak Czech, afraid of responsibility. Many Ukrainian women just feel cleaning is easier.” Interviewee D adds that there is help available, “I am currently officially unemployed. Another day, I had a meeting in the Employment office. I was asked why I underestimate myself. Why I do not bring diploma from Ukraine, there are free courses available as well for the unemployed. There is help, immigrants just need to overcome fear and start trying.” Interviewee T, a kindergarten teacher, has
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“Czechs are not willing to work more than 8 hours a day. Ukrainians came to earn money, they are giving all their strength and are willing to work even 15 hours a day.” Interviewee Q has a small company in construction sector and confirms, “From my 20 year experience in construction sector, Ukrainians are not discriminated in pay. They receive as much for their work as Czechs do.” He also adds, “Ukrainians got used to work in construction sector, they are happy for their jobs and they are not willing to change anything.”
All respondents have admitted that knowing Czech language is very important to integrate into society and find employment. Having a legal status is also essential to find a better paid employment and working conditions. Housing is still a painful question for several respondents, because some of them are currently paying off mortgage.
4.3 Cultural Integration
In the cultural integration section, the author has asked the respondents regarding their attitudes towards the Czech core values, their friendships with Czechs, opinions on intermarriage and criminality among Ukrainians. The knowledge of the language also is a part of cultural integration, although it is also essential to socio-economic integration.
Ministry of Interior (2015) statistics showed that in 2015 around 7,1 percent was crime was committed by foreigners. 1 055 Ukrainians were prosecuted for the crimes of different level of seriousness, but most of crimes were regarding visa overstay. The statistics show that immigration is the Czech Republic does not increase criminality, because when the number of immigrants grow, the criminality became even lower.
In 2015, 2 158 foreigners joined the Czech language courses and socio-cultural integration classes for children and adults in the Integration centers organized by Czech government (Ministry
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available.The respondents the author has interviewed haven’t joined the courses but Interviewee F
available.The respondents the author has interviewed haven’t joined the courses but Interviewee F