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[ARTICLE] Ukraine: Europe's Labour Agency
Jun. 25th, 2003 12:13 pmChildren left parentless as migrants flee poor Ukraine
By Arie Farnam | Special to The Christian Science Monitor
POROSHOVO, UKRAINE
Along the banks of a mountain stream, village children gather firewood to be used for roasting yet another meal of potatoes. "That's all there is to eat these days, potatoes and more potatoes," says 10-year-old Stas. "That's why all our moms and dads left." This western edge of Ukraine is one of the most impoverished places on the European continent. Here, the Carpathians form both a natural barrier between the former USSR and Europe - and an economic dividing line between desperation and hope.
Most of the adults in these mountain villages have made the crossing in order to work illegally in Central and Western Europe. But the price is high: a generation of children left behind with grandparents, and a region increasingly drained of its working population.
The trends are part of a larger shift seen in this former Soviet republic. Ukraine is swiftly replacing Southern Europe as the source of cheap labor for the Continent.
While the Ukrainian government registers just 30,000 citizens working legally in foreign countries, analysts estimate that as many as 7 million Ukrainians already work abroad, and that number is growing by about a million each year. These migrants bring about $1 billion back to Ukraine annually, government agencies claim. While the money they earn abroad has become a lifeline in village economies, sociologists warn of a host of negative effects.
( Read more... )
In the Soviet period, Ukraine's balance of migration was mixed: Many Ukrainians did participate in all-Union migratory trends just as they did in the days of the Tsarist empire, but Ukraine also received immigrants from Russia. The collapse of the Ukrainian economy, the relative prosperity of Ukraine's western neighbours--Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary have at least twice Ukraine's GNP per capita, for instance--and most importantly the fall of Soviet-era barriers to migration have made mass emigration possible.
The region of Transcarpathia described in this Christian Science Monitor article has always been particularly marginal, regardless of whether it was under Soviet, Czechoslovak, Austro-Hungarian, or Ukrainian sovereignty, so the mass emigration depicted here is atypical for Ukraine as a whole. I suspect that as the gap in incomes between Ukraine and central Europe widens, however, the difference may increasing become one of degree not of type. It certainly won't help Ukraine's catastrophic demographic situation.
When will it stop? It might well not. Between 1989 and 2001, the percentage of Jews in Ukraine fell from 0.9% to 0.2% according to the official census results. This fall did not occur because of anti-Semitic persecution, or mass assimilation; rather, it occurred because Ukrainian Jews had automatic citizenship rights in Israel (also Germany), and left as quickly as they could. Why wouldn't gentile Ukrainians follow suit if they were able?
By Arie Farnam | Special to The Christian Science Monitor
POROSHOVO, UKRAINE
Along the banks of a mountain stream, village children gather firewood to be used for roasting yet another meal of potatoes. "That's all there is to eat these days, potatoes and more potatoes," says 10-year-old Stas. "That's why all our moms and dads left." This western edge of Ukraine is one of the most impoverished places on the European continent. Here, the Carpathians form both a natural barrier between the former USSR and Europe - and an economic dividing line between desperation and hope.
Most of the adults in these mountain villages have made the crossing in order to work illegally in Central and Western Europe. But the price is high: a generation of children left behind with grandparents, and a region increasingly drained of its working population.
The trends are part of a larger shift seen in this former Soviet republic. Ukraine is swiftly replacing Southern Europe as the source of cheap labor for the Continent.
While the Ukrainian government registers just 30,000 citizens working legally in foreign countries, analysts estimate that as many as 7 million Ukrainians already work abroad, and that number is growing by about a million each year. These migrants bring about $1 billion back to Ukraine annually, government agencies claim. While the money they earn abroad has become a lifeline in village economies, sociologists warn of a host of negative effects.
( Read more... )
In the Soviet period, Ukraine's balance of migration was mixed: Many Ukrainians did participate in all-Union migratory trends just as they did in the days of the Tsarist empire, but Ukraine also received immigrants from Russia. The collapse of the Ukrainian economy, the relative prosperity of Ukraine's western neighbours--Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary have at least twice Ukraine's GNP per capita, for instance--and most importantly the fall of Soviet-era barriers to migration have made mass emigration possible.
The region of Transcarpathia described in this Christian Science Monitor article has always been particularly marginal, regardless of whether it was under Soviet, Czechoslovak, Austro-Hungarian, or Ukrainian sovereignty, so the mass emigration depicted here is atypical for Ukraine as a whole. I suspect that as the gap in incomes between Ukraine and central Europe widens, however, the difference may increasing become one of degree not of type. It certainly won't help Ukraine's catastrophic demographic situation.
When will it stop? It might well not. Between 1989 and 2001, the percentage of Jews in Ukraine fell from 0.9% to 0.2% according to the official census results. This fall did not occur because of anti-Semitic persecution, or mass assimilation; rather, it occurred because Ukrainian Jews had automatic citizenship rights in Israel (also Germany), and left as quickly as they could. Why wouldn't gentile Ukrainians follow suit if they were able?
