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 219 tlement was the best solution for solving their problems. All the families in Mala Zubovszczina and Malinovka - villages with descendants of Czech immigrants - had to sell their property, prepare themselves for travel, choose among the possibilities of accommodation in the Czech Republic, and then finally moved. Before travelling, they learned the Czech language, and their children went to a summer camp in the Czech Republic (more details in Dluhošová 1992). Shortly after arriving in the Czech Republic, these re-settlers began cooperating with the organisation for migrants to the Czech Republic from Ukraine after World War II - the Union of Czechs from Volhynia and Their Friends.9 They established a new branch of this organisation - a Committee of Czechs from the Chernobyl Area. Members of this branch discussed problems facing new re-settlers with the Czech government, the Czech Parliament and the mass media. Hence members of this immigrant group had strong mutual ties and were able to defend themselves against perceptions in the Czech public that they were engaging in suspicious behaviour. They succeeded in pushing Parliament to make an exception and grant them Czech citizenship without a five-year waiting period. The media also created good images of the well-bounded group. Immigrants from Kazakhstan also created before their arrival a special organisation that facilitated resettlement by teaching Czech language and creating positive images of the group. By contrast, guest workers lack structured organisation, tribunes, image-makers, and support organisations. Public image of these people is created only occasionally by the Czech mass media and only after an eventful incident. They are typically in the working-age, do not speak Czech, and do not have flats and houses in the Czech Republic, do not bring children or elderly relatives with them and it seems to wider public that they also do not have needs and demands. To the general Czech public, such individuals appear strange and are thus stereotyped as either unqualified and poor manual workers, or as "criminals”. None of them addresses their
