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
Migration from the former Soviet Union 221 through the “client.” The guest workers are quite safe although the "client” keeps a part of their money, and they are, in a sense, the mediator’s slaves. Two or three buses per week go back and forth to the Czech Republic from Mukachevo, Uzhgorod, Tyachiv, and Yasinya; there is a daily bus connection to Lvov and two daily trains to Central Ukraine. Guest workers can choose to take a regular bus and risk the possibility that it might be controlled by the local Mafia, whereupon every person will have to pay a 200 U.S. dollar transit fee; or they can also choose to take a “safe bus,” which is more expensive but carries fewer risks. For their part, Czech employers are not concerned with how their workers arrive. For them, it is often most convenient to be in contact with only one responsible person. Also, the government regulates only the number of immigrants. Thus, a lack of interest in migration flows has left a space for both businessmen with a labour force and for powerful organisations that prey on labour migration. A high municipal officer in the Ukrainian town of Tyachiv told us: “We have no problems with the Mafia here. This is a little region with small towns. Everyone knows each other. The Ukrainian Mafia operates either in your country or in Poland because your police thinks that if Ukrainians do something to other Ukrainians there, it is their own business. The Mafia can do there what it wants.”10 In our opinion, this is a somewhat high-flown idea because the core of the above mentioned criminal structures reside in Ukraine. However, this indicates the weak point in the attitude of local authorities in both countries. 4. Unqualified labour force composed of university-educated migrants In one small Subcarpathian town, we met the director of a local hospital who told us that he had worked three times in the Czech Republic between 1994 and 1996. The man had gone there every year for either two or three months at a time and worked in the Czech town of Libérée as an unqualified
