Too close or too far: Contemporary Challenges and Opportunities of the “Near Diasporas” from a Country of Origin Perspective

This paper is based on the evidence from the representative national survey and two follow-up focus groups conducted in Ukraine during the summer-autumn of 2015. It analyses the relationship between stayers and migrants by measuring perceived social distances to diaspora and other migration-based groups on the private, professional, public and civic levels. The findings reveal that accepting diaspora as „neighbours‟ and „co-workers‟ would be the most comfortable options for a majority of respondents, yet possibilities for public and civil participation might be limited by the reluctance of local social institutions to accept new actors, as well as, by lack of role-holder‟s motivation on the diaspora‟s part. The data confirm that neighbouring countries remain the main route for Ukrainian outward migration and that overwhelmingly these flows are from Ukraine to Europe whereas Russia is decreasing as a destination country. As the economic downturn and lack of employment opportunities in the „cross-border countries‟ might lead to return movement in the future, there is a need for growing engagement of the Near diaspora in development programmes at home.

Ukrainian labour migrants in Poland: part of society or unwanted visitors?

The fall of Communism has brought about significant social and economical changes and consequently, labour migration has reached serious dimensions in the regions of Central and Eastern Europe. The majority of the countries that make up this territory lacked sufficient experience in managing labour migration and integrating immigrants into society. These factors have resulted in the growth of an international mobility experience for Poles. Poland has become sending emigrant country and simultaneously – the host of the tens of thousands of foreigners, including legal and illegal immigrants. This is probably only the first stage of this well-spread phenomenon, ”once immigration to Poland has been initiated as a mass and long-lasting phenomenon, it will follow what seems to be a universal European migration cycle”.

As Marek Kupiszewski and other Polish researchers argue, Poland should be immensely interested in proper labour migration regulations and practices: as both the sending country, and the receiving country, aiming to manage migration flows with a view to meet the emerging labour market shortages and to enhance the overall economic growth of the country.3 But not less important is the way the majority of Poles perceive these immigrants in their country. In various studies this factor was found as being practically insignificant. Poland is a very homogenous society and there is often no adequate understanding of the social and economic value of labour migration. Moreover, attitudes towards foreigners might also be an important mediating and decisive factor in Poland’s immigration process.

Inequality in Total Returns to Work in Ukraine: Taking a Closer Look at Workplace (Dis)Amenities

This paper examines the importance of non-monetary dimensions of work in studies of overall compensation inequality. Relying on the methodological advances in the field of multidimensional inequality and using the representative sample of Ukrainian industrial establishments over the period from 1994 to 2004, we show that the focus on monetary compensation is too narrow. It ignores significant dynamics of inequality in workplaces. Analysis of such workplace conditions as risk of on the job injury, various benefits/amenities, and insecurities with wage payments, shows that the in-equalities in these conditions do exacerbate inequalities in hourly wages.

Workers in establishments paying highest hourly wages have enjoyed relatively greater reductions in the total workplace injury burden, greater retention of various benefits/ amenities, and relatively larger increases in wage payment security (decreased wage arrears), compared to the workers in the lowest paying establishments. These findings present an important lesson for further research on inequality inasmuch as a narrow focus on wages actually disguise the growing inequality in overall returns to work, as well as considerable implications for the development of social policies.

Costs and benefits of labor migration on migrants’ professional trajectories and their households’ well-being: comparative case study of Ukrainian labor migration to Italy and Ireland.

Based on the interviews with Ukrainian migrants of different regularity statuses in Italy and the Republic of Ireland, this study sets off to unbox the notion of “regularity” as a clear-cut and unambiguous state and explore in depth the fragmentation of status and rights that the process of regularization often entail. The study also looks at the emerging compensating mechanisms and networks that are developed by migrants in place of the institutional dead-ends. Legality and regularity in migration, – that are often presented in policy making as a black and white matter, – are in practice, a complex and lengthy process for migrating individuals. In public debates and policy-making legal / regularized migrants are often presented as welcome and wanted while illegal ones as unwanted and often criminal.

In practice, however, a lengthy process of regularization and the lack of communication between various state institutions involved create a vast number of forms of semi-regular states of liminal legality (Menjivar 20116) among migrants, where family members often have different status. Many spent years suspended in processes of applying, re-applying and (re-)validating their status. All of these shades of regularity open or close certain doors to employment, mobility, social services, health and studying opportunities and, to a great extent, affect people’s professional opportunities, migratory decisions and trajectories, family rights and personal lives. The research looks into access to labor market, social security and opportunities for mobility for Ukrainian migrants in countries that have different immigration regimes.

Welfare State, Social Stratification, Democracy and Emigration Intentions

According to the ‘new economics’ of migration, social stratification and social protection are important for emigration decisions and behaviour, but there is scarce evidence how welfare programmes independently correlate with emigration. The first part of the project uses the recent UNDP/UNICEF Social Exclusion Survey for two former Soviet republics of Moldova and Ukraine and two former Yugoslav Republics of Macedonia and Serbia and employs multivariate regressions techniques. It finds that social stratification in terms of occupational social class and subjective perception of well-being has statistically significant association with emigration; having social insurance correlates with lower propensity to leave the country, whereas the quality of jobs has significant effect on emigration intentions. The varying results between Balkan and former Soviet states suggest that the effect of welfare provisions depends on the macro context of emigration decisions.

The second part of the study tries to understand the modes of emigration from the South Caucasian countries and investigates new patterns emerging because of recent developments in the region. Since 2005, South Caucasian countries diverged in their socio-economic models of development, which are reflected in different covariates of emigration intentions in these societies. Using micro-level survey data from the Caucasus Barometer for 2009-2010, this paper looks at how various sets of variables associate with emigration intentions. We test a hypothesis that recent uneven economic and political developments are reflected in individuals’ intentions to leave these societies. Results indicate that, controlling for other covariates, political attitudes have significant associations with emigration intentions and the effect appears to be more important in Azerbaijan, while economic problems seem to be most relevant for emigration intentions from Georgia

All Girls’ Best Friends? Care Migration and the Care Diamond in Ukraine in the Context of Population Aging

This research focuses on the dynamics of the ‘care economy’ in Ukraine in conditions of demographic change and feminisation of migration fluxes. The key analytical concept used to study operation of Ukrainian care economy is Shahra Razavi’s ‘care diamond’, which is understood as the architecture that explains the relationship between the state, market, family and community in providing care. The paper argues that increasing out-migration of women from Ukraine entails a ‘care deficit’ in society and alters the operation of the care diamond so that the family has an increasing role. In turn, the family tends to outsource its care functions to the market, but remains responsible for organising and funding paid homecare. The paper shows that the emerging ‘care crises’ in Ukraine results from the strategy of ‘crisis transfer’ employed by post-industrial nations to shift the burden of multiple crises, care crises among them, from the nucleus of the word system to its periphery. In conclusion, the paper offers proposals to develop coherent policies aimed to cover key sectors of the care diamond, with a special focus on the market and non-profit sectors.

Aging in Russia and Ukraine: a Comparative Analysis of Current State and Future Trends