“I will return to Ukraine”
Migrant workers want to come home. Uncertainty over their prospects in Ukraine
IVANO-FRANKIVSK – Who says we aren’t in the European Union? Ukrainians have been there for a long time, but not in the way that some of our politicians would like to see them: voting in the European Parliament, enjoying all those political and economic advantages, etc. Back-breaking toil, no legal support whatsoever, exposure to various humiliations and abuses, the awareness that no one needs you abroad or back home – such is the reality that Ukrainian migrant workers face in the civilized society of the West.
Starting in the 1990s, the gap between the rich and the poor in Ukraine began to widen disastrously. Tentative estimates pointed to a ratio of 1-2:90 percent, with the middle class constituting 7-8 percent, considering that in civilized countries the middle class makes up the majority of society.
In Ukraine, this class is an insignificant dividing line between people who are barely surviving and those who can afford every available luxury. You can keep discussing the socioeconomic hardships of the early years of Ukrainian independence. But the very fact that Ukrainians, with their psychological tendency toward private ownership, however small, have failed to form an economically secure middle class is simply unnatural.
Where have all those Ukrainians who could be characterized by economic sociologists as a middle class of working owners gone? The lack of jobs, low wages, and an unregulated system of crediting – all these and many other factors have forced Ukrainians to blaze trails where there has long been a reliable socioeconomic infrastructure. The massive influx of migrant workers in Western Europe (fewer in Russia) has become the hallmark of an entire historical era.
Today Ukraine’s middle class is coming home, having earned money in both legal and illegal ways (often amounting to large sums even by European standards). These people are willing to set up businesses in their native land. What can their beloved homeland offer them after 17 years of national independence?
After his recent trip to Portugal Mykola Paliichuk, the governor of Ivano-Frankivsk oblast, spoke to the city’s civic organizations, inviting them to take part in a project aimed at supporting small businesses for migrant workers who have left Ivano-Frankivsk oblast and are abroad, but now wish to return home. His initiative was sparked after he spoke with Ukrainian immigrants in Portugal, who said they would be happy to return if they could earn a decent living here. Abroad, they earn an average of 800-2,000 euros a month. It is hard to deny that the prospect of earning such sums in a Ukrainian oblast center is not very realistic.
Illegal migrant workers abroad, who are denied any social protection, are the elements of a mass but indistinct phenomenon. On the one hand, work abroad has countless negative consequences – and not just for migrant workers. The children of parents who leave Ukraine in search of better-paying jobs abroad leave their children to be cared for by grandparents and other relatives, and they are the first to suffer from such haphazard arrangements. Often these children turn into unbridled consumers. It was reported recently that a sixth-grade boy at a school in Ivano-Frankivsk took two hryvnias out of his pocket and proceeded to use them to wipe the blackboard.
The degradation of society is all-embracing. People who leave their native land are no longer socially active or interested in the economic and political situation in their home country. They believe that no one cares about them there and that nothing depends on them.
Hennadii Mykytka, president of the European Integration Center in Ivano-Frankivsk, insists, however, that “everything depends on one’s level of culture. After you earn enough to secure an adequate living and build a home, you start asking yourself: what’s next? What things are more important?” After that, such people start reassessing their values; they tend to turn to the spiritual, and start investing in the church and education.
Some Ukrainian migrant workers become more aware of their Ukrainian identity after having spent some time abroad. This is one especially positive aspect, since you can hardly become a European without realizing your affiliation to a certain nation and state. According to interviews with migrant workers from western Ukraine, which were conducted by the Institute of Public Affairs, quite a few of them experienced such metamorphoses. Some 65 percent are willing to return to Ukraine if they can see real prospects for self-realization.
Who are our migrant workers in the social dimension? One Web site has posted an article by Ivan Markiv, eloquently entitled “A Ukrainian Middle Class Is Taking Shape in Italy.” The irony is not unjustified. Markiv writes that the Ukrainian migrant workers in Italy who took part in the survey consider themselves potential businessmen. Almost half of them (47 percent) have a post-secondary education; 32.6 percent have a secondary education, and 26.1 percent have a specialized secondary education.
These people represent a broad range of specialties: technical (51.6 percent), humanities (19.5 percent), and medicine (3.22 percent). Here you find a variety of age and social groups, educational levels, academic majors, and occupations. These are people who failed to put their professions to effective use in Ukraine, and who are now regarded as illegal migrant workers outside their homeland.
A total of 25.8 percent of respondents want to start a business in Ukraine. This makes up one-quarter of migrant workers’ capital that can be invested in the Ukrainian economy. Nor should migrant workers’ investments in education be overlooked. Their children can enroll in prestigious institutions of higher learning in and outside Ukraine.
Conducting a comparative analysis, the Institute of Reforms, a socioeconomic ratings agency in Ukraine, focused on regional centers in western Ukraine. Its findings prove that the highest ratings are precisely in the west of Ukraine. They are attributed to the influx of hard currency in the form of money orders that residents of these western oblasts receive from their relatives, who are migrant workers in Greece, Portugal, Italy, Spain, and elsewhere.
Experts estimate that practically 20 percent (over two million Ukrainians) are migrant workers, people from the western regions of Ukraine, who regularly send sizable money orders amounting to an annual 700 million to one billion US dollars. In Chernivtsi oblast, one-third of all residents (between 170,000 and 180,000 people) are migrant workers, who send home more than 300 million dollars a year-three times the size of the region’s official budget.
This kind of personal income in western Ukraine determines high consumer expenditures and money spent on acquiring real estate and tuition fees. Local authorities clearly have reason to turn a blind eye to the phenomenon of migrant workers.
“No one is starving over there,” Mykytka said, “and they are taking good care of our people.” According to the head of Ivano-Frankivsk’s European Integration Center, the Spanish province of Valencia has approved 980 million euros to assist immigrants for the next two years.
In contrast, Maria T., a Ukrainian migrant worker in Italy, says that migrant workers in Italy are treated like nonentities, like modern slaves. She wants to come home. She misses her relatives and her beloved grandson. But leaving is not an option right now because she is waiting for papers to legalize her papers, so that she will be able to go back to Italy without any problems. She first traveled there illegally, and she still gets the shivers when she recalls that trip in the back of a truck.
The Women’s Prospects Ukrainian Center has polled Ukrainian migrant workers in Italy. Its findings read that almost 90 percent of respondents received tourist visas, including 49.4 percent, who obtained 7-10-day visas; 36 percent received two-week visas; 10.6 percent-for one month; 2 percent-for three months, and 1.8 percent-for six months. In other words, at the time of the interview, most of these Ukrainian migrants were living illegally in Italy. Only 3.8 percent of all respondents said they had formal work permits, 69.6 percent had none, and 26.5 percent refused to answer this question.
However, the problem is not legalizing this phenomenon but helping these Ukrainian migrant workers return to Ukraine. Ivano-Frankivsk oblast was the first to launch a project aimed at returning migrant workers from abroad. This project envisages the creation of new contacts and the expansion of existing ones with countries in whose regions Ukrainians have found employment.
In addition, the Human Rights Bureau in Ivano-Frankivsk has launched a program aimed at protecting the rights of migrant workers and their families. This program is entitled “I Will Return to Ukraine.” The bureau’s plans include the construction of a chapel on Pryvokzalna Square in memory of migrant workers who have died or are listed as missing.
According to Myron Dmytryk, the head of the Human Rights Bureau, the main directions of the program are “lobbying for legislation to secure rights for migrant workers, providing free legal assistance to families whose relatives died while working abroad, offering employment assistance to migrant workers after they return to Ukraine, and establishing control over intermediary firms that specialize in employment for migrant workers abroad in order to prevent fraud and human trafficking.”
