The Multicultural Center Prague and Faculty of Humanities of Charles University in Prague held a three-day workshop on 'Migration Processes in Central Eastern Europe'. It brought together a hundred participants to discuss current migration patterns and related social processes in Central and Eastern European countries (CEE). Together we engaged in debates about migration theories, discussed empirically based accounts from the "region", and listened to experiences of non-governmental representatives concerned with various aspects of migration processes in CEE. After the workshop, we made a selection from the papers and released a publication entitled Migration Processes in Central and Eastern Europe: Unpacking the Diversity. It is downloadable at the following addresses:
(lower resolution version, pdf, 474 kB)
(high resolution version, pdf, 3,4 MB)

Additionally, the initiative is envisaged as the first step towards long-term cooperation of migration analysts and experts, thus creating an interdisciplinary network for a dynamic dialogue. The main coordinator - the Migrationonline section of the Multicultural Center Prague - specializes in providing information and analyses of migration processes and policies in the Czech Republic and other (not only) Central Eastern European countries. Its website www.migrationonline.cz shall serve as the platform for the future cooperation. This workshop was organized with the generous support of the Open Society Fund Prague within the framework of the East East Program and UNHCR Czech Republic.

Call for papers
Application and registration
Updated! Panels, seminars and topics of presentations.

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Deadline for submitting abstracts is 15 JUNE 2005!

Call for papers (.pdf file)

• All abstracts (19/08): shorter version (34 pages) and longer version (48 pages, with bibliographic information).
• Program (a Word document)
  
• Participants in panels and seminars and topics of presentations (a Word document)
  
• Recommended readings for the panel on reception of refugees (the Information and Cooperation Forum final report, Word document - at the site of the Organisation for Aid to Refugees) and the anthropological panel (an article by Nina Glick Schiller, The Centrality of Ethnography in the Study of Transnational Migration, Seeing the Wetland instead of the Swamp). Suggested bibliography on the topic of migration and the new EU eastern borders can be found here.

We invite both young and more experienced specialists to submit an abstract of their presentation for the afternoon seminar sessions of the "Workshop on Developments and Patterns of Migration Processes in Central and Eastern Europe" before 15 June (see description below).

Basic guidelines on your paper

• You will have fifteen minutes for your presentation in the seminar.
• We will be expecting that you send to migrace@mkc.cz and to the coordinator of your session either your paper (max. 3000 words) or a detailed description/outline of your presentation by August 15.
• After the seminar selected papers will be published at the Migration Online website. We plan to publish them in the form of an online publication that may be circulated and publicised easily. For an example of such a publication see the proceedings from the seminar on Social and Cultural Diversity in Central and Eastern Europe.
• The coordinator(s) of each session in which you will be presenting might get in touch with some of you to rephrase some of the questions and focus of your paper so that it fits withing the overall frame of the session.
• Each presentation should have one clearly formulated problem/issue that should be described in concrete terms. There should preferably be one to three questions that would be connected to the issue and that would be discussed during the debate. These should not be just rhetoric. The questions might be formulated together with the seminar chairman/chairwoman. Please, note that the format of each seminar may differ according to the way it is set up by the coordinator of the session.
• While researchers are expected to present a paper based on their research, NGO representatives can also deliver a presentation based on their experiences with assisting migrants, cooperating and negotiating with governmental organizations and/or other NGOs, etc. The working language will be English and there will be no translation provided.
• Would you be preparing a power point presentation, please, let us know in advance.
• If you cite in your paper, please, provide endnotes.

Application and registration

Interested applicants shall write an abstract (not more than 500 words), fill in the registration form, and send it along with their curriculum vitae (including a list of publications if any) to migrace@mkc.cz. Completed applications are to be submitted electronically at the latest by 15 June but preferably earlier. Applicants will be notified about the results of the application by 21 June. Should you have any further questions, do not hesitate to contact Marek Canek at Multicultural Center Prague, Vodickova 36, 110 00 Praha 1, Czech Republic, email: mise@mkc.cz, tel./fax +420 - 296 325 345.

Registration fee is 30 EUR. It is payable to the bank account of the Multicultural Center Prague (Multikulturní centrum Praha), (IBAN) CZ46 0300 0000 0004 8296 8953, SWIFT CODE (BIC): CEKO CZ PP PRA, name of the bank: CSOB, bank code: 0300, variable symbol: 55552.

Participants invited through the framework of the East East program and non-EU citizens from Central and Eastern Europe are exempted from the registration fee. Other participants may ask to be exempted from the registration fee upon consideration.

The expenses (travel, accommodation, meals, etc.) of 16 selected participants from CEE countries (Belarus, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Ukraine) will be covered from the East East Program of the Open Society Fund Prague. While some of these participants have already been selected we are still looking for East East program participants (an expert and/or a representative of an NGO) from Belarus, Moldova, Poland, Slovakia and Ukraine. The deadline for these applications is 8 June.

Accommodation: Can be arranged by the organizers in the hotel (15 EUR per person/a night in a double room) or dormitory facilities (7 EUR per person/a night) of the Charles University.

Panels, seminars and topics of presentations

Program of the workshop

There are the following three morning panels and seven afternoon seminars. The afternoon sessions will run PARALLEL to each other. The program and the topics of presentations are below or can be downloaded above.

• Thursday 25 August
  Panel on Migration patterns and policies in Central and Eastern Europe
  Seminars:
  Integrating gender, class, ethnicity and age into the studies of migration
  The impacts of migration on local social structures: 'receiving' and 'sending' settings, urban and rural, international and national
  Migration policies and migrants' practices
  
• Friday 26 August
  Panel on Reception of refugees in Central Eastern Europe
  Seminars:
  Refugees in Central and Eastern Europe: reception, integration and various institutional responses
  Borders and borderlands of the European Union
  Migration management: the role of non-governmental organizations, experts and researchers
  Comparing forms of migrants' exclusion and inclusion in Central Eastern Europe: from citizen(-ship), denizen, asylum-seeker to foreigner, alien and illegal

• Saturday 27 August
  Panel on Socio-Anthropological challenges for studying migration
  Conclusions

PANELS

A) Migration patterns and policies in Central and Eastern Europe, Thursday 25 August, 9.45 - 12.30

The migration patterns within, to and out of Central Eastern Europe (CEE) will be sketched out in this panel. The migration realities in the CEE have been described by terms such as circular or incomplete migration, ethnic diasporas, petty traders, open-air markets or client system. We aim to discuss the conceptualisations of this part of the European migration space. This attempt, however, is not meant to lead to the construction of yet another specificity of this part of Europe.

Since the 1990s, countries such as the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia have been characterised as a "buffer zone". Do they still perform this function for certain migrants? Does the concept of the "buffer zone" express adequately the current migration realities of Central and Eastern European countries and what are the debates, policies and interests that create the basis for the continuation of its use in both academic and migration policy debate? Only some countries of Central and Eastern Europe joined the privileged political, economic and a free movement zone (although not yet fully) and some have remained outside. Consequently the question of the role of the states that were left behind the new EU eastern border in the European management of migration may be raised.

In migration literature, the European integration process has been identified as central for the understanding of growing restrictions and institutionalisation of migration policies in CEE. The application of the EU acquis has been negotiated in each national setting and a certain kind of regulation of migration has been established by different actors involved. Conditions have been set for migrants to come, work and stay in the new member states of the EU. Patterns of integration but also of exploitation of migrants have been emerging.

Session coordinator: Marek Canek

Speakers:

• Dusan Drbohlav, (Faculty of Science, Charles University, Czech Rep.): Overview of migration processes in East Central Europe; Current migration policy of the Czech Republic.
  
• Dumitru Sandu, (University of Bucharest, Romania): Patterns of temporary emigration: experiences and intentions at individual and community levels in Romania.
  
• Endre Sik, (ELTE, Department of Ethnic and Minority Studies, Hungary): discussant.
  
• Darius Stola, (Warsaw University, Center for Migration Research, Poland): What does migration policy respond to? The evolution of Polish immigration policy.

B) Reception of refugees in Central Eastern Europe, Friday 26 August, 9.30 - 11.00

Most Central and Eastern European countries joined the 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees in the first half of the 1990s. Turning from predominantly refugee-sending countries into the countries of transition and destination, they have not been among the most generous receivers of refugees. The region has been labelled as a "buffer zone"' or a "waiting room" which holds migrants unwanted in the EU. Moreover, asylum and immigration policies have represented some of the main areas of EU harmonization process in the new accession countries from Central and Eastern Europe. An influx of refugees was expected after the accession to the European Union in 2004. However, the numbers of refugees applying for asylum have actually decreased along with national and EU asylum regulations getting more and more restrictive.

In this panel, we wish to discuss what patterns and developments of refugee reception and integration could be identified in the region and how they have changed since the beginning of the 1990s. Moreover, how did the EU harmonization in the field of asylum policies influence the current developments and how have the respective countries negotiated this process? Did it undermine the protection of refugees in the region? We would also like to open the discussion about the identification of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe as refugee receiving countries and to what extent they still perpetuate the label of a transit country, the country where refugees do not really intend to stay.

Another question to be raised in this panel is how are various patterns of refugee reception and integration "imprinted" in refugees' experiences and everyday survival strategies? And finally, what is the future research agenda for the research on refugee issues in the Central European countries?

Session coordinator: Alice Szczepanikova

Speakers:

• Miluse Dohnalova, (Refugee Facilities Administration, Czech Rep.): discussant.
  
• Barbara Poharnok, (Hungarian Helsinki Committee, Hungary): Reception and integration of asylum seekers in Hungary.
  
• Martin Rozumek, (Organisation for Aid to Refugees, Czech Rep.): Reception of asylum-seekers in Central European countries.
  
• Daniel Topinka, (Palacky University, Czech Rep.): The Social Processes in the Asylum Centre - The Prospectors and Theirs Strategies.

C) Socio-Anthropological challenges for studying migration, Saturday 27 August, 9.00 - 11.00

Despite recent growth in attention being paid to migration phenomena in Central and Eastern Europe, surprisingly few insights and lessons have been incorporated from the discipline of social and cultural anthropology. This has been displayed primarily in the taken-for-granted uses of the notions like ethnicity, culture, national identity, citizenship, but also in an often unclear and confusing application of methodological and analytical tools. This panel will introduce some general lessons that can be learned from the discipline characterized by putting the migrants' experiences first and also by its essentially comparative dimension. Combining these two constitutive factors sheds some fresh light on the social, spatial and historical variations and differences in understanding the concepts and categories used for explaining migration phenomena. It also teaches us that migration processes can not be understood without relating them to the rise of modern nationalism, nation-state building and larger socio-economic transformations of societies in Europe that decisively shaped them. The socio-anthropological perspectives (so that we have a reference to our title here) can help us to move beyond the naturalised equation often made between territory, nation, state and citizen. The panel will thus address some anthropological challenges for our understanding of migration processes both from the methodological and theoretical perspective.

Session coordinator: Jan Grill

Speakers:

• Izabela Kolbon, (Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, Jagiellonian University, Poland): Poles in New York City: Shifting identities in transnational space.
  
• Rozita Dimova, (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Macedonia): Duldung Trauma: Bosnians in Berlin.
  
• Dimitrina Mihaylova, (ISCA, University of Oxford, UK): Mapping borders and mobility as transformations of political subjectivity: the case of Pomaks (Muslim Bulgarians) in South Eastern Bulgaria.
  
• Petra Ezzedine-Luksikova, (Charles University, Czech Rep.): discussant.

Recommended reading - Nina Glick Schiller (2003), The Centrality of Ethnography in the Study of Transnational Migration, Seeing the Wetland instead of the Swamp, in: Nancy Foner (ed.) Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research. Temporary use for educational purposes for the workshop participants with the kind permission of the author of the article.

This article of Nina Glick Schiller offers an overview of the recent contributions that the anthropological studies made to our understandings of transnational migration. After introducing historical development of anthropological studies of migration and some terminological clarifications, Nina Glick-Schiller addresses some of the crucial issues of linking theory and methodology in the migration research. Debunking some common myths portraying ethnography as too concerned with particular 'anecdotic' stories without aiming at larger generalization, the author clearly demonstrates that the approach of building, generating, questioning and re-formulating theory during the research process itself is what makes it a particularly apt tool for the study of transnational migration processes. Scrutinizing the influence of methodological nationalism, which sees nation-states 'as natural units of analysis,' she urges us to re-consider our assumptions and methodologies by looking at migrants as operating within the transnational social fields of social relations.

SEMINARS

1. Integrating gender, class, ethnicity and age into the study of migration
2. Reception of refugees in Central Europe: trends, experiences and challenges
3. The impact of migration on local social structures: 'receiving' and 'sending' settings, international and national, urban and rural
4. Borders and borderlands of the EU
5. Migration policies and practices of migrants
6. Migration management: the role of non-governmental organizations, experts and researchers
7. Comparing forms of migrants' exclusion and inclusion in Central Eastern Europe: from citizen(-ship), denizen, asylum-seeker to foreigner, alien and illegal

1. Integrating gender, class, ethnicity and age into the studies of migration, Thursday 25 August, 13.30 - 16.30

In this workshop, we wish to examine the interplay of various vectors of difference such as gender, class, ethnicity or age and how they are shaping migrants' experiences of migration at the level of every-day life. Divisions of class, gender, ethnicity, and age structure relations among various groups of migrants as well as their contacts with the majority population will be discussed. We suggest addressing some of the following questions:

• How are migrants' experiences gendered? Are gender relations and gender roles in migrants' families and social networks challenged by the experience of migration and life in exile?
  
• How are ethnic and cultural identities re-constructed and negotiated in exile?
  
• What are the most influential representations of migrants, how are they constructed and how do they shape the host society's approaches and attitudes to migrants?
  
• In what ways are migrants' class positions challenged by migration? How do migrants perceive and negotiate these changes? What strategies do they employ to improve their social status?
  
• How are generational relations challenged by migration experiences within and outside the family? How do migration experiences differ according to migrants' age and position in the family?

Session coordinator: Alice Szczepanikova

Presentations:

• Ramona Lenz, (J. W. Goethe-University, Germany): 'Fake' Marriages as a Threat for the Nation - Migrant Sex Workers in Cyprus.
  
• Alexandra Szoke, (CEU, Hungary): New forms of mobility among Western European retirees: German migrants in south-western Hungary.
  
• Olha Yarova, (Central European University, Ukraine): The impact of the migration of Ukrainian women to Italy on their families.

2. Refugees in Central and Eastern Europe: reception, integration and various institutional responses, Friday 26 August, 13.00 - 16.30

This workshop is meant to be a follow up to the panel Reception of refugees in Central Europe. It hopes to integrate the researchers' accounts of asylum policies and the position of refugees in the region with the experiences of NGO representatives. We hope to open critical discussion about current trends in asylum policies in Central and Eastern European countries, about the role of refugee camps, NGO cooperation with the governmental bodies, etc.

Most Central and Eastern European countries joined the 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees in the first half of the 1990s. Turning from predominantly refugee-sending countries into the countries of transition and destination, they have not been among the most generous receivers of refugees. The region has been labelled as a "buffer zone"' or a "waiting room" which holds migrants unwanted in the EU. Moreover, asylum and immigration policies have represented some of the main areas of EU harmonization process in the new accession countries from Central and Eastern Europe. An influx of refugees was expected after the accession to the European Union in 2004. However, the numbers of refugees applying for asylum have actually decreased along with national and EU asylum regulations getting more and more restrictive.

In this session we wish to discuss what patterns of refugee reception and integration could be identified in the region and how they have changed since the beginning of the 1990s.

Besides that, the following questions are proposed for consideration:

• To what extent are Central and Eastern European countries still transit countries, and do we possibly face intentional perpetuation of the "transit country" label by the governments that are looking for excuses to accept only a low number of refugees?
  
• How are patterns of refugee reception and integration "imprinted" in refugees' experiences and everyday survival strategies? How do refugees negotiate changes in asylum policies?
  
• What is the role of refugee camps in the reception and integration of refugees in Central and Eastern European countries?
  
• How has NGO assistance to refugees in the region developed since the beginning of the 1990s? What were the most significant achievements, problems and flaws?
  
• Is it a useful strategy to delimit one's research focus based on the category of "refugees" or should we look for more broad and theoretical concepts to frame our research agenda? Do we risk essentialization of "a refugee" as an object of our research?

Session coordinator: Alice Szczepanikova

Presentations:

• Vladislav Gűnter, (Center for Integration of Foreigners, Czech Rep.) Recognized Refugees in the Czech Republic - NGOs vs. NGOs vs. the State vs. refugees vs....? ….
  
• Agnieszka Maria Kusz, (Palacky University, Olomouc, Czech Republic): Are all children our children? The protection of refugee children in Poland and Czech Republic in asylum centres and children's homes.
  
• Kajo Zboril, (People in Peril, Slovakia): Integration Problems of Refugees in Slovakia
  
• Bartlomiej Tokarz, (Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, Poland), Country of Origin Information Research as a Prerequisite of Fair Refugee Status Determination.

3. The impacts of migration on local social structures: `receiving' and `sending' settings, urban and rural, international and national, Thursday 25 August, 13.30 - 16.30

This session shall examine migration as a dialectical process of both re-construction of migrants' identities and changes of and within the local social structures (of both 'sending' and 'receiving' societies). The starting premise for such a study of migration must be an acknowledgement of the fact that before becoming an im-migrant he/she is above all an e-migrant leaving his/her society of origin. This duality of a migrant experience must be complemented by detailed study of these local social and power structures that determine, but are also significantly determined by, his/her departure or arrival. Additionally, migrants can exercise a 'long-distance' influence on a local setting on different levels such as through disseminating various imaginations about life in exile, or changing the local economic and social relations by financial and social remittances directed back to original settings, or materially by bringing different goods, etc. Migrants' arrivals and their presence in the 'adopted' countries bring about various transformations of the local 'receiving' settings. This session will thus look at the interplay between the dispositions and determining factors drifting people towards migration from local structures, as well as the experiences following the arrival in newly adopted country. Migrants' experiences of exile shall be understood against the backdrop of the changing local social, political and economic structures. We invite papers discussing processes of social change based on the impacts of migration on local social structures from all regions of Central and Eastern Europe.

Session coordinator: Jan Grill

Presentations:

• Neda Deneva, (CEU, Bulgaria): The Role of Ethnicity in the Re-construction of "Home": Internal and International Migration in a Bulgarian Muslim Village.
  
• Raluca Nagy, (Universite Libre de Bruxelles, Romania): Migration from and to Maramures (Romania) - Practices of settlement.
  
• Razvan Stan, (Romanian Academic Society, Romania): Socio-economic Impacts of International Labour Migration on Catholic and Orthodox Villages from Eastern Romania. A Comparative Approach.
  

4. Borders and borderlands of the European Union, Friday 26 August, 13.00 - 16.30

The unreliability of political meanings in border settings and attempts to fix these meanings by a state, citizens and transnational bodies by force of migration policy is a theme of the seminar. Legitimization of external EU borders is not only a one-way process. On the EU level, it is attended with rhetoric of establishment of a common area of freedom, security and justice (the Hague Programme) but also national interests and interests of border regions play a significant role. We intend to focus on issues of establishing and reification of contemporary eastern EU border and its local consequences with respect to cross border migration. On different levels, the session shall critically examine the rhetoric and practices of the 'opening' of borders on the one hand, and the increasing patrolling and/or closing of borders by the nation states towards the potential (un-)wanted migrants on the other. Organizers welcome papers focusing on the following topics:

• Migration and constitution of the eastern EU border as the border dividing "Europe" and "non-Europe".
  
• What are the local interests and global arguments involved in this process? How is migration constructed as an issue of political debates in borderlands?
  
• Whether, how and to what extend does the "new" eastern EU border re-present and re-produce "new" boundaries? Border institutions and their influence on local short term/ day-to-day migration

Session coordinator: Jakub Grygar

Presentations:

• Daniela Gutu, (Centre for the Prevention of Trafficking in Women, Moldavia): Another Berlin wall on the Prut River or the consequences of the new EU eastern border on the Republic of Moldova.
  
• Yaraslau Kryvoi, (Belarusian State University, Moldavia): Challenges to migration policies in Belarus.
  
• Natalia Parkhomenko, (Center for Peace, Conversion and Foreign Policy of Ukraine, Ukraine): The Ukrainian Labour Migration to the countries of Central and Eastern Europe: the view of the Ukrainian labour migrants.
  
• Cosmin Radu, (University of Bucharest, Romania): "We are all tourists!" Informal labour markets and socio-economic practices on the Romanian-Serbian border in different migration regimes.

5. Migration management: the role of non-governmental organizations, experts and researchers, Friday 26 August, 13.00 - 16.30

The political project of a 'rational and effective migration management' in CEE as it is envisioned by different actors in the field of migration politics, relies not only on the capacities of states and their international organisations alone but assigns crucial functions to non-governmental organisations and migration researchers. The increasing role of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in international relations in general and in the field of migration policy in particular is stated in a variety of publications and contexts. The growing importance of NGOs is frequently connected with a hope for more legitimacy and recognition of human rights. Experts and researchers, working for all actors in the migration field, fulfil a variety of functions, from data gathering and situations analysis to policy development. Often migration research as an academic discipline claims to contribute to a 'better', more 'efficient' or even more 'just' migration policy.

The workshop shall examine these overly uncritical claims of the role NGOs and academicians play in migration management. The following questions are proposed for further consideration:

• What different types of NGOs are there in the migration field and which different functions did and do they fulfill in the implementation of a new migration regime in CEE?
  
• What functions do experts and researchers have in the formulation of aims and strategies of migration management? What is their actual role and influence?
  
• What is the political rationality behind the call for more policy-relevant knowledge to be produced by migration scholars? Has the production of such knowledge resulted in "better" migration policies?
  
• In what ways do the positions of relevant NGOs and mainstream migration studies differ and resemble the approach that states and international organisations have on migration management in CEE?

Session coordinators: Fabian Georgi and Joshua Hatton

Presentations:

• Olena Burkatska, (Charitable Foundation "Rokada", Ukraine): Rokada's Work.
  
• Derya Durmaz, (International Catholic Migration Commission, Turkey): An NGO-Government Cooperation Model from Turkey.
  
• Martin Geiger, (University of Bonn/EUROFOR, Germany): International organisations, the stabilisation and accession process in South Eastern Europe and the Management of Migration.
  
• Vera Ivanovicova, (Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, Czech Rep.): The Czech pilot project "Selection of Qualified Foreign Workers".
  
• Petra Klvacova, (Charles University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Czech Rep.):Foreigners in the light of Research: Analysis of Research Reports.

6. Migration policies and migrants' practices, Thursday 25 August, 13.30 - 16.30

The seminar will try to find a new perspective on migration issues. While the overwhelming majority of migration research and politics views migrants as the object of observation, control or support it is important to shift the perspective to incorporate the views and autonomy of the migrants themselves. In order to assess the impact of the migration policies and border regulations in Central and Eastern Europe it is important to know how the migrants perceive and act towards negotiating and/or subverting them.

Contributors are invited to submit papers that take into consideration the tensions between various forms of social resources (kinship, ethnicity, shared poverty, cross-border marriages, reciprocal transactions between "employers" and "employees" and the reverse, exploitation), acting from below and the development of an increasingly restrictive European Union as an area of "freedom, security and justice", imposed from above. The relative importance of the social networks is aimed to contribute to various forms of adaptation, while the strength of transnational dependencies will probably assure a certain level of continuity in migration.

The participants are invited to propose answers to the following questions:

• What are the migrants' practices? How these practices have changed during recent political and economic transformations?
  
• How do migrants deal with increasingly restrictive measures and new developments applied as forms of "managing migration"? How is border control negotiated and appropriated by migrants?
  
• To what extent do the various migrants' practices prevent or enable an establishment of a "rational and effective" system of migration management in CEE?

Session coordinators: Cosmin Radu and Fabian Georgi

Presentations:

• Julia Bernstein, (Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, Germany): Russian Food stores as Transnational Enclave? Coping with the immigration Reality in Israel and Germany.
  
• Taras Budzinskyy, (Laboratory for Social Studies by NGO "Centre for Private Initiative Support", Ukraine): Protection of the Rights of the Ukrainian Labour Workers in Countries of Western Europe and Russia.
  
• Oana Ciobanu, (University of Bucharest Romania): Migration Ideologies, Migration Policies.
  
• Marketa Moore, (University of Hong Kong, Czech Rep.): New Chinese migration to East Central Europe: Comparative perspective.
  
• An Verlinden, (Ghent University, Belgium): From Migration Control to Migration Management Elements for an Inclusive, Bottom-up Approach towards Worldwide Migration Management.

7. Comparing forms of migrants' exclusion and inclusion in Central Eastern Europe: from citizen(-ship), denizen, asylum-seeker to foreigner, alien and illegal, Friday 26 August, 13.00 - 16.30

In the national order of things, states and their citizens re-produce certain demarcations of specific categories of who is included, and who is excluded from national, ethnocultural or local 'communities' or other social groupings. The formal or imagined membership then give access to certain rights and benefits and privileges to those considered as insiders vis-a-vis those labeled as outsiders. The criteria for selecting these often exclusionary categories, as well as the ways these are experienced may take different forms. Thus we can find various socio-historically institutionalized forms of inclusion/exclusion such as these formally embedded in the institutions of citizenship or asylum-seeker category, yet also more informal ones determining everyday practices and ways of seeing the migrants. More general factors determining the transformation of these categories and their contents range from changing political systems accompanied by struggle for political power, competing nationalisms to the radical socioeconomic transformation of societal order (such as the one following 1989 in most Central Eastern European countries). These macro-structural changes bring transformations into the more intimate spheres of kinship networks and survival strategies that do not have to be displayed only on the level of international migration from one state to another but also in the periphery-center, rural-urban migration processes. We invite papers addressing the processes and mechanisms through which different forms of exclusion and marginalization operate as well as the ways migrants oppose them.

Session coordinator: Jan Grill

Presentations:

• Andrea Barsova, (Office of the Czech Republic Government): Nationality, Civic Citizenship and Inclusion in the Czech Republic
  
• Oleg Chirita, (International Labour Organization): Consequences of Labour Migration for the Republic of Moldova.
  
• Jan Cernik, (Institute of Ethnology of Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Charles University in Prague, Czech Rep.): Client system.
  
• Petr Kafka, (Department of Political Science, University of Toronto Canada): Nationality Laws in Central Europe: Is our treatment of immigrants fair or square?
  
• Hana Synkova, (Institute of Ethnology, Faculty of Arts, Charles University, Czech Rep.): "In the Czech Republic, they call you "sir" - The migration of Slovak Roma as a tactic to overcome exclusion.