Central and Eastern European Migration Review

Across many countries of Central and Eastern Europe the emigration of skilled professionals since 1990 has become a serious problem of the loss of specialised human capital. This paper on Albanian doctors is one of the first to study in depth an example of this broader phenomenon of brain drain from the CEE region. There is a global demand for medical doctors which exceeds supply, leading to international competition in which the richer countries, with higher salaries and better working conditions, attract medical graduates and trained doctors from poorer countries. The migration of doctors from Albania is set within this globalised and hierarchised market for medical expertise. On the one hand, the movement of doctors to richer countries helps to plug the deficit in their supply in such countries and enables the individuals concerned to improve their incomes and life conditions. On the other hand, the loss of medical professionals severely harms the structure and quality of the health service in the sending country. This paper addresses three main questions. First, what are the characteristics of the Albanian medical brain drain in terms of its size, socio-demographics and destination countries? Second, what are the causes and consequences of Albania’s loss of medical doctors? Third, what are the prospects of the migrant doctors returning to Albania or contributing their expertise from abroad? Answers are provided via a dual methodology of an online survey of Albanian doctors currently working abroad (N=301) and follow-up interviews with 25 of them. More than half of the survey respondents do not intend to return to Albania and a further third are undecided. Interview data indicate that the doctors are well-integrated abroad and see ‘no future’ for themselves and their families in Albania. There is, however, a greater willingness to share expertise with the home country via cooperation and short visits. Obstacles to return are partly income-related but, to a greater extent, reflect the poor working conditions and career prospects in Albania, including endemic corruption – the same factors that caused emigration in the first place. The policy implications of our findings are challenging; one solution is to mandate a period of work in Albania for newly qualified doctors before they are allowed to go abroad.

This study uses European Values Study 2017 data to identify key correlates of economic and cultural concerns over immigration in Central and Eastern Europe against the backdrop of the 2015 refugee crisis. It does so by running fixed-effects regression models covering 10 CEE countries and testing the associations between core cultural identities and basic values on the one hand and concerns over immigration on the other. It was found that low trust in people of another nationality and – to a lesser degree – low generalised social trust were associated with both economic and cultural concerns over immigration in CEE. Also, CEE residents subscribing to both voluntarist and ascriptive nationhood criteria were more likely to be concerned about economic and cultural aspects of immigration than those having a purely voluntarist conception of nationhood. It was also found that the association between national pride and economic concerns over immigration is stronger in Visegrád countries. Meanwhile, the study did not generate evidence that immigration attitudes in CEE were related to the strength of national identification, religious affiliation, cosmopolitan identity, Universalism or perceived state vulnerability. The article maintains that immigration attitudes in CEE are deeply embedded in societal value systems that are, in turn, shaped by distinctive historical legacies.

In migration studies, scholars differ in their emphasis on which level of government plays the central role in immigrant integration policies. There are voices drawing attention to a ‘local turn’, highlighting the rising power of local actors in immigrant integration. At the same time, other authors point to a ‘national turn’, connected to the introduction of civic integration policies – or even the Europeanisation of integration policies coming from the supranational level. In order to better understand how integration policies are governed, this article compares the Austrian and Czech governance of these policies, examining the relationship between the different levels of government involved. The analysis is based on Scholten’s typology of centralist, localist, decoupling and multi-level forms of governance. It asks how integration policies are governed in Austria and Czechia and how their governance changed with the implementation of civic integration policies. While centralist and decoupling tendencies appeared in the Austrian case, a multi-level governance approach emerged with civic integration in Czechia. These results disprove the assumption of a supposedly more likely multi-level governance approach in a federal state and a more centralised logic under the unitary regime, as suggested by the literature.

This research sets out to analyse which factors hinder the attempts of migrants from Russia to combat disinformation about living in Finland – which represents the ‘West’ – through social remittances. This was looked at from the perspective of a particular case, ‘the child custody’ disinformation dispute. The research finds that migrants do actively try to shape the ideas that their friends and family in Russia have of Finland; part of this happens through discussion of the child custody case. The migrant interviewees had tried to provide information that differed from that provided by the Russian media and officials. However, they had found it difficult to change the perspectives and opinions of their friends and family through social remittances because of the strong foothold that traditional media outlets have in Russia, the perception of a strong East vs West dichotomy and a perceived mistrust of migrants and the things which they report from abroad. The study offers insights into the various factors that constrain the transmission of social remittances.

This article investigates the integration of Vietnamese-origin immigrants into the political sphere in Poland. Drawing on the reconceptualisation of integration as a two-way interactive process between migrant actors and host countries, this study examines the Vietnamese’s political integration by disentangling the migrant group’s willingness to be politically integrated through their participation in the political opportunities granted in the host society. Empirically, this study focuses on the viewpoint of immigrants, analysing the Vietnamese’s latent and manifest political participation in Polish society. By employing mixed-method research with a parallel mixed design utilising qualitative and quantitative data, this study discloses the visibility of political integration into Polish society among Vietnamese-origin immigrants. The integration is characterised by a modest willingness for political engagement, exhibited by a low involvement level in latent activities and a very low rate of engagement in the manifest dimension. Political integration motivation is highly linked to the perception of obligation fulfilment to the host society, the desire to gain recognition from the hosts and the protection of liberal values. The results also uncover a variation in political participation across primary demographic factors, with a high degree of involvement manifested among males, older people and the 1.5 and second generation.

Despite representing the second-largest immigrant group in Germany, Polish immigrants and their descendants are understudied and have often been described as ‘invisible’ as they have a reputation of ‘becoming German’ quickly and unproblematically. Challenging this notion and considering the prevalence of anti-Eastern European racism in the German context, this study analyses interviews with 22 highly educated Germans of Polish descent, focusing on how interviewees talked about being German and/or Polish and their experiences of stigmatisation and discrimination, in both their childhood and teenage years and as adults. In so doing, the study contributes to the literature on how the ethnic and national identities of white descendants of immigrants are related to experiences of exclusion. Specifically, some interviewees (Type 1) said that they felt only German (and not Polish) and denied experiencing stigmatisation or discrimination in their present lives. Other interviewees (Type 2) embraced a symbolic Polish ethnicity while framing exclusionary experiences as a thing of the past. Type 3 interviewees reported a process of re-ethnicisation, arguably enabled by the absence of exclusionary experiences in their present lives. Finally, there were interviewees (Type 4) who reported embracing their Polish identity, which led to experiences of stigmatisation in certain contexts.

The life strategies of Polish post-accession migrants built after 2004 were based on the specific conditions then prevailing in Poland and the UK. However, conditions have changed over the years and recent events – particularly Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic – rapidly revalued migrants’ accumulated resources and changed the context of their migration. They have introduced uncertainty about the adopted life strategies, mobilised to once again rethink the future and to make decisions that had often been postponed for many years. The 2018–2021 demographic statistics clearly show an exodus of Poles from the UK from over 1 million in 2017 to fewer than 700,000 by the end of 2021. Despite the correlation of dates, this is not necessarily a result of Brexit or of the pandemic. This article seeks to answer the question of how Brexit impacted on the life strategies of Poles and how could it be a catalyst in their decisions to return to the home country. It is based on qualitative research comprising 30 interviews with Polish migrants in the UK, conducted online in 2020–2021 – thus just after Brexit – and during the coronavirus pandemic.

This paper is based on research analysing cases of unsuccessful East–West return migration. Specifically, it examines returnees’ expectations, needs and challenges that shape the decision for re-migration or double return migration. Qualitative data were collected from 2020 to 2022 through 16 in-depth biographical interviews. The analysis applies narrative thematic and discursive approaches, focusing on specific word choices and discursive forms. Although subjective and personal factors largely influence the narrators’ mobility, the article highlights the structural factors underlying their unsuccessful return-migration experiences. The research question is: What structural problems have determined returnees’ decisions for double return migration? The results depict return migration as an emotionally driven decision motivated by a sense of belonging, a duty to Latvia, a desire to contribute and institutional encouragement to return. Differences in communication culture, work environment and power relations emerge as key structural challenges contributing to double return migration or leaving the homeland. In analysing the factors prompting narrators to reconsider their return and to leave Latvia for a second time, the study concludes that, during their migration, the interviewees have adopted new values that render them outsiders and make them unwilling to adapt.

This article explores whether triggering the ‘Temporary Protection’ Directive (TPD) to deal with the refugee movements from Ukraine has heralded the end of the solidarity crisis in the European Union’s asylum policy. It makes two major contributions to the literature: first, it shows how the mode of responsibility allocation in the Common European Asylum System by a costs-by-cause principle violates the EU’s solidarity principle, creating a continuous solidarity crisis that was exacerbated after the refugee influx of 2015/2016. Second, it demonstrates how, by invoking the TPD, the EU exhibits continuity in both eroding asylum cooperation and putting increasing emphasis on border controls focusing primarily on the externalisation and deflection of unwanted migration. The EU evades the dysfunctionalities in its asylum system by employing the temporary protection scheme, continuing a policy approach of more national discretion in terms of refugee protection while, at the same time, Member States’ policy preferences vis-à-vis non-Ukrainian protection-seekers have not changed. Taking into account the disproportionate distribution of responsibilities it has created among the Member States, the TPD decision has not ended the solidarity crisis in Europe’s asylum policy.