This article focuses on a comparison of attitudes towards migration in twenty European countries. It analyses data from the European Social Survey 2002. The first part of the article contains a summary of the available sources of data on migration and a brief outline of developments and the current state of migration in Europe. The second part looks at the question of whether attitudes towards immigrants are related to the numbers and structure of immigrants in a country and their economic situation. Three thematic areas are examined: 1) the host population's willingness to accept immigrants; 2) perceptions of the impact of immigration on the host country; 3) attitudes towards different forms of integration of immigrants. The findings indicate that Europeans are more willing to accept migrants that are of the same race (ethnic group) and from Europe than they are migrants of a different race (ethnic group) and from states outside Europe. The strongest unwillingness to accept people from other states and the strongest emphasis on the negative impact of immigration was observed in Greece and Hungary, while the strongest willingness to accept immigrants was found in Sweden and Switzerland and was connected with a more positive perception of the impact of immigration.
This article summarises the results of field research carried out in 1998 among families of Czech origin in north-west Kazakhstan. The centre of research was the rural community of Borodinovka, founded in 1911 by emigrants of Czech origin who had already settled in Tsarist Russia in the later 19th century on the territory of what today is the Southern Ukraine. Research was ais o conducted in the industrial town of Aktyubin, where some of the descendents of the Czech emigrants had moved over the years. We likewise visited the village of Meshcheryakovka not far from Orenburg in Russia, where other emigrants of Czech origin has settled at the beginning of the 1990s after leaving Kazakhstan. The text contains a concise history of Czech emigration to Kazakhstan, with a description of characteristic livelihoods, accommodation, food, healing, social and family life. Attention is also devoted to forms of identification with ethnic and national consciousness. The survey shows that the group is a remarkable cultural form in which elements of Russian, Ukrainian, Czech and Kazakh culture interpenetrate. The descendents of Czech emigrants conceptualise some of the particular features in material and spiritual life by which they distinguish themselves from the other groups of the local population as specifically culturally Czech, whether these in fact have their roots in Bohemia or elsewhere conditions. The research suggests that the concept of tradition in social anthropology is highly problematic, since in the conditions of contemporary Kazakhstan and Russia, where there is a struggle formaterial survival, the application of cultural elements that we often call „traditional“ can actuallybe an innovation born of hardship. These are elements relating to self-sufficiency andindependence of a range of public institutions such as canteens, shops, bafories, houses of cultureand so on. Institutional relations have also relaxed in the field of transport and health care, and newforms of commercial exchange are emerging to replace monetary economy. After 1991 when Kazachstan gained independence, much of the non-Kazakh population moved away. In recent years descendents of the Czech emigrants have also been re-emigrating to the Czech Republic and to Russia with their Russian, Ukrainian and other family members. The materials obtained are deepening our knowledge of Czech minorities abroad.