Personal characteristics of migrants from Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) in the European Union: a comparative study of Ukrainian migrants in the Czech Republic and Italy

Wadim Strielkowski, Charles University in Prague
Eralba Cela, Università Politecnica delle Marche
Elena Ambrosetti, Università di Roma "La Sapienza"

The aim of this paper is to provide a comparative analysis of personal characteristics and main determinants of remittance behavior for Ukrainian migrants in the Czech Republic and Italy. Our research attempts to answer a number of novel research questions by determining whether some personal attributes could be traced for Ukrainian labour migrants in the EU and their families in Ukraine. Further, the paper generalizes the findings for the outward East-West migrations from CIS to the EU countries (both old and new EU Member States). In order to shed some light on the issues raised in the paper, empirical evidence from two independent research projects was employed: the first one is Ukrainian Migration Project (2010-2012) that focuses on migrations and remittances from Ukraine to the Czech Republic and the second one is INTEGROMETRO project (2008-2009) that dealt with measuring the integration of immigrants in selected regions of Italy. The data obtained with the help of both survey is confronted with the main findings from migration theories and research literature on migration and remittances. The importance of approach used in this study relies on the independent data set which enables the researchers to test the main hypotheses without using official sources and governmental data that cannot capture all important facts and figures of this topic. The outcomes of this study may enrich the knowledge on migration and remittances from the perspective of basic and applied research (e.g. for designing the policy implications for the construction of migration and development policies in Italy and the Czech Republic with the implications for the whole EU).