Questioning Migration in the Czech Republic Before the 2009 Economic Crisis

Abstract

The Czech Republic is an interesting case of a newly emerging economy, which has undergone profound transition from communist country to consolidated democracy with a functioning free market economy. The Czech Republic differs from its post communist counterparts in Central and Eastern Europe in the aspect of fast growing labour immigration. During the whole period of transition from a planned economy with a totalitarian regime from 1990 until 2008 (and practically until now), the Czech Republic had a positive net migration balance with only one exceptional year of 2001 when more people emigrated then immigrated (Drbohlav et al. 2010: 35). One of main features of the growing Czech economy at the beginning of new millennium was strong demand for a cheap foreign labour force. The Czech economy is oriented toward the export of industrial products and its growth was substantially stimulated by direct foreign investment attracted by the geographical proximity to West European markets, as well as sufficient infrastructure for industrial production. Despite the fact that foreigners (both through foreign investment and a growing immigrant labour force) are contributing significantly to the success of the Czech economy -similar to the situation in Western Europe during the 1950s and 1960s – as will be shown below, the Czech population lacks enthusiasm for the presence of foreigners on its soil, and the contribution of immigrants to the economy remains largely unrecognized. Czech public opinion has been strongly influenced by negative stereotypes of immigrants presented by media, which has tended to concentrate on the growing numbers of the immigrants in the country and the problems of integrating newcomers in West European societies. Interestingly, Czech media, politics and public opinion tend to mirror the Western debates about immigration and largely ignore the reality in the country. The demographic and economic need for immigration in the Czech Republic is similar to that which was present in Western Europe during the early second half of twentieth century, but it is obfuscated by contemporary scepticism and suspicion of immigrants. As a nascent country of immigration, the question for the Czech Republic is whether this scepticism will make for more considered policies that can learn from the problems of migration management of the West. To begin to answer this question, our analysis will start with a historical overview of the situation in Western Europe, followed by a discussion of securitisation theory in relation to Western Europe more broadly, and followed by a focus on the situation in the Czech Republic.