Torsello, Davide - Pappová, Melinda: Social Networks in Movement. Time, interaction and interethnic spaces in Central Eastern Europe - Nostra Tempora 8. (Somorja-Dunaszerdahely, 2003)
Interaction, migration and change
212 Zdenëk Uherek - Katerina Plochová 1918—1939 interwar period, when Subcarpathian Ukraine was a part of Czechoslovakia, people from this region used opportunities to earn money in the Czech Lands. A significant number of political immigrants from the newly established Soviet Union also found shelter there. But by the 1990s, this experience had been forgotten by many Czech citizens. The communist government of Czechoslovakia employed foreign workers after World War II, but these individuals were brought in first from Bulgaria in the 1950s and then later from Cuba and Vietnam (a still important source country of immigrants to the Czech Republic). Ukrainians began spontaneously migrating for economic reasons again only at the beginning of 1990, when employers began valuing them as a cheap and undemanding work force. During the first half of the 1990s, we observed that demand for such workers was increasing. In 1993, there were 7,745 legal Ukrainian guest workers in the Czech Republic while in 1995, there were 26,748 people. In 1996, the number of Ukrainian legal guest workers peaked: 42,056 working permits were issued for Ukraine. Owing to an economic slump and increasingly negative attitudes among Czechs about foreign migration, the number of Ukrainian workers decreased in the following year. First of all, since 1997, the number of work permits decreased starkly, and this trend continued afterwards (see Appendix). Nevertheless, the decrease of working force as a whole was not so dramatic compared to the drop of work permits. In reality, there are many Ukrainian illegal workers in the Czech Republic, and the black market of Ukrainian labourers has become a stable element of the Czech labour market. Also, the number of Ukrainians who hold trade licences is continually increasing. It can be argued that a part of the guest workers - originally owners of work permits - changed their strategy and became tradesmen, often again in manual professions. At the end of 2000 there were 21,402 Ukrainian tradesmen in the Czech Republic (Horáková 2001: 215, 217; Appendix). The period between 1990 and 1996 has been described by many informants in Subcarpathian Ukraine as a golden
