Ukrainian Migration and Social Profiles

Since the fall of the Iron Curtain, Ukraine has become a country of massive emigration, due to the economic and political situation in the country. During the time period between 1990-2014,

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Ukrainian population has decreased from almost 52 million people to about 45.5 million people or by 12.37 percent (Koshulko 2015, World Bank 2017). Based on the level of average income, Ukraine is placed among lower middle income countries (World Bank 2017).

It is hard to estimate the emigration rates from Ukraine, because of illegal and temporary emigration, but according to the World Bank estimate is up to 7 million emigrants annually (Duvell 2006). Based on the estimation, around 4 to 15 percent of Ukrainians work abroad, that is as much as 25 percent of Ukrainian working population (Duvell 2006, Keryk 2004). It is estimated that 5 million people are temporary migrants and 2 million are working abroad permanently (Keryk 2004).

The major destination countries for immigration are Russia, Italy, Poland, Portugal, the Czech Republic, and non-European countries such as the USA, United Arab Emirates and Argentina. In fact, almost half of all migrants go to Russia (Keryk 2004). The minimum wage in Poland is 7.9 times higher than in Ukraine, and in Spain minimum salary is almost 15 times higher, so there is no surprise that Ukrainians are trying to emigrate abroad permanently, or to find a short-term seasonal work (Koshulko 2015).

The remittances Ukrainian immigrants send back to Ukraine form a valuable part of the country’s GDP. The number of remittances estimates differs based on the sources and calculations, because a part of remittances are sent by illegal immigrants through unofficial channels. For instance, World Bank estimates $411 million USD annually (Duvell 2006). The other sources estimate remittances as high as 6 billion USD based on the assumption that each immigrant sends back home 100 USD per month. And in fact, this assumption is very conservative, because for instance, the majority of Ukrainian women working in Italy as caregivers send 400-600 Euro per

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legally; they mostly use friends or relatives to send money back home. Some immigrants might also avoid official channels because they do not want their income to be taxed by Ukrainian government.

Some studies suggest that in reality, the amount of remittances could be as much as 20 percent of Ukrainian GDP (Markov et al. 2009).

The term in Ukrainian language for a temporary migrant is zarobitchanyn (zarobitchanka for a female migrant). The term actually means a person who earns money because the meaning of the word “zarobitok” is income (Fedyuk 2006). Economic migration became a survival strategy for Ukrainian families to get over a difficult economic and political times in Ukraine. Khorma et al (2006) argue that in fact, this temporary migration phenomenon created a middle class in Ukraine.

The economic situation in Ukraine was hard in the second part of 90s, when the actual unemployment rates grew up to 40 percent, although the official statistics showed the rate of 12 percent (Luptak 2008, cited in Strielkowski and Rausser 2013). In the end of 90s, 80 percent of Ukrainians received their pay with delay of 2 to 6 months (Luptak and Drbohlav 1999). Moreover, a part of salary was paid in cheques and coupons, and even in kind (with building material or other products). The research done by Luptak and Drbohlav (1999) shows that only 1 percent of Ukrainians felt that their income was sufficient to live in the end of 90s. The research conducted by Wallace (2002) showed that only 8 percent of Ukrainians felt that their income was enough. Those outcomes showed that the majority of the Ukrainian citizens could not survive on their income.

Therefore, Ukrainians could not rely on one employment and either found a second employment in order to mitigate the risks of staying without pay or chose to migrate (Luptak and Drbohlav 1999).

The study conducted by Sidorenko (1995) showed that the reasons for short term migration were economic difficulties at home, and migration was a solution to improve the economic situation in the family. This might be the reason for high remittances from the migrants, because their primary reason to migrate was to maintain standard of living at home. Therefore, the major push factor that

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forces the emigration from Ukraine was the economic situation in the country (Drbohlav et al 1999).

Pirozhkov (2006) did a research on Ukrainian migrants traveling abroad for the purpose of earning money. He came to the conclusion that people between the age 20 and 34, who had higher education and psychological and physical health were most likely to emigrate. The majority of income earned abroad was invested back in the Ukrainian economy.

Ukrainian immigrants became a primary source of labour in the Czech Republic since 90s, when during the economy transformation there was a major development of the service and construction industries in the country (Strielkowski and Rausser 2013). The Czech citizens wished for a more Western-style affordable housing, and the availability of mortgages made the dream of a new house for many Czech citizens come true. This created a boom in the housing market that lasted until the end of 90’s. The boom in the housing market has created jobs in the construction industries that were fulfilled by the Ukrainian labour.

Ukrainians were pushed into emigration due to the economic situation in the country.

Workers in Ukraine were not paid for a long period of time and the inflation decreased their purchasing power (Wallace 2002). In the 90s, Ukrainians wages were only one-third of wages in the Czech Republic. Of course, the wages in Germany and Austria were even higher, but the situation in the Czech Republic after the split of Czechoslovakia offered plenty of opportunities for the locals and immigrants, especially in the small-scale business (Wallace 2002). The legislation could not keep up with the rapidly changing economy, which created the room for exploiting the situation and working in the country illegally was easy at that time. The majority of Ukrainians came to the

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work, and family reunification procedures were not available. So, the labour market dictated the gender composition of Ukrainian migrants (Sidorenko 1995). At the beginning of transition to the market economy, the Czech Republic began to require additional labour in the service industry and construction. This secondary labour market had a high turnout, low wages, short-term and seasonal work, conditions that were unattractive to the locals. Czech workers preferred to go to work at such seasonal jobs in Germany, where they can get paid more.

Ukrainians, who wished to settle in the Czech Republic at that time, faced difficulties, because the Czech Republic did not expect the immigrants to settle permanently. The naturalization process was quite difficult, integration efforts were non-existent (the first integration programs appeared in 2000s), and it was even hard to find Czech language courses (Wallace 2002). The Czech Republic at that time expected immigrant labour to go back to their home countries in the future.

The majority of migration to the Czech Republic was labour oriented. The Czech Republic issued the most of the work permits among countries in the Central Europe. However, besides the legal migration there were high number of irregular immigrants, who did not have a work permit or residence status that allowed employment (Wallace 2002). Applying for the work permits was troublesome, as the procedure became more and more strict after 1996, and many irregular workers also did not want to legalize their status in the Czech Republic in order to avoid paying taxes. Such immigrants were coming to the Czech Republic to earn income for a specific reason such as buying a house and go back to their families in Ukraine as soon as possible (Fedyuk 2006). Getting a work permit ideally lasted around 90 days, but in practice it was even more time consuming, so the majority of immigrant workers preferred to get a trade license or work illegally (Luptak and Drbohlav 1999). The majority of illegal workers worked in construction, agriculture, housekeeping, hospitality sectors. They usually worked for a small scale business in a private sector because small

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The majority of Ukrainian immigrants tended to occupy low-skilled jobs upon arrival (Leontiyeva 2014). Although many immigrants thought that a low-skilled job is a temporary solution until they settle down and find a more suitable job, the statistics showed that the majority of immigrants stayed in a low-skilled job permanently because with time they lost their qualifications and skills. In the Czech Republic, 58 percent of Ukrainians are employed in low skilled jobs, while only 5 percent hold managerial positions (Leontiyeva 2014). In terms of low-skilled jobs, 44 percent are employed in construction and 21 percent in manufacturing industries.

Ukrainians are often perceived as being overeducated for the job they perform in the Czech Republic. The findings from a study conducted by Leontiyeva (2014) showed that Ukrainians are mostly not overeducated for the work position they hold. 22 percent of Ukrainians are over educated for their work position, when the share of overeducated workers among different nationalities is 18 percent. The study also confirms that staying in the country for a longer period of time will not help the immigrants to decrease the gap between their education and job position. A study by Strielkowski and Rausser (2013) suggested that the Ukrainian labour migration to the Czech Republic is targeted and specialized in several sectors such as construction. They focused on construction industry in the Czech Republic and found out that immigrants ,who work in the construction sector in Ukraine, were more likely to work in the same sector in the Czech Republic, so the stereotype that the Ukrainian doctor is working at construction site in the Czech Republic is perhaps misleading. However, a situation when a university graduate worked had a low skilled job in the Czech Republic was more common in the 90s.

Those findings are also confirmed by the interviews the author conducted during her stay in

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Republic due to the economic reasons (Interviewee O) . One respondent, who worked as a nurse in Ukraine, is now working as a cleaning lady (Interviewee F) . The majority of respondents did not change their occupation during the years they stayed in the Czech Republic, only 3 women told the author they took courses in the Czech Republic to get local work qualification.

According to the research done by Luptak and Drbohlav (1999), many Czech firms did not welcome foreign labour (more on the attitudes of the Czech society on the immigration issue see in Chapter 4). The concern of the Czech firms was that local labour force could not compete with the immigrants from the East, because they were willing to work long hours, during the weekends and under unacceptable working conditions for the local labour. Furthermore, the Czech companies who employ local labour could not compete at the market, because their prices were higher than the competition. Also, the respondents pointed out that foreign labour spend their income abroad and do not invest in the Czech economy. The Czech firms were convinced that foreign workers increased the criminality and unlawful behavior, and spread infectious diseases (Luptak and Drbohlav 1999).

The other group of respondents pointed out the positive aspects of foreign labour. The Czech firms pointed out that foreign labour took positions that could not be fulfilled by the local labour force because of the current system of social welfare and because vocational schools could not attract enough students.