Ukraine and Temporary Migration in the European-Asian Transnational Space

Abstract

This chapter is focused on the placing of Ukraine in temporary transnational migration in Euro-Asian social space. For different categories of migrants Ukraine is a country to be used for further movement. Highly skilled specialists come to Ukraine, stay for several years and try to migrate to other countries; unskilled workers or asylum seekers are mostly transit migrants looking for possibilities to continue their trans-border movement to West. On the other hand, Ukrainian outmigrants to the EU and Asian countries intend to return home, but are not sure when it is actually going to happen. Sometimes they move from one country or region to another in order to find appropriate life and working conditions. Many of return migrants stay at home for some time and then, lacking adequate employment in the home country go abroad again using migrants’ networks. It means that for many Ukrainian external migrants the return home is only one of the stages in realizing their migration projects. Our findings reveal that temporary migration becomes a permanent way of life for various categories of people. Therefore, the temporariness of migration turns to be a phenomenon of constructing the social relations of the “people on move”: they are not willing to fully integrate into host societies (e.g. learning language etc.). Main politico-legal, socio-economic and socio-cultural aspects of external migration in Ukraine (involvement of officials in the corrupt schemes providing necessary permits to stay in Ukraine and transit through its territory to the EU, migrants’ remittances becoming means of mobilization for non-migrants, relative adaptation of migrants not by official Ukrainian institutions but rather through social and illegal transnational networks) put the country at the crossroad of transnational migrants’ networks and flows.