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Immigration became an especially thorny and publicly discussed issue with the so-called Refugee Crisis beginning in 2015. The stance of the Czech and Polish governments was dominated by strong anti-Muslim and anti-immigration rhetoric. Still, both countries have witnessed a steady increase in mainly short-term immigration from various Asian countries such as Bangladesh or Pakistan ever since. This paper analyses Czech and Polish migration policies against the backdrop of a historically constructed notion of anti-illegal immigration policy, and category of temporary migration, coupled with the problematic nature of debt-financed migration in Asia. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Czechia and Poland (2018-2021), in-depth and semi-structured interviews with migration experts, academic and grey literature, official documents, and the method of Accidental ethnography, this paper argues that silencing of actual labor immigration in political communication while employing anti-migration rhetoric represents a discursive gap typical for liberal democracies. It further concludes that rendering migrant labor as a temporary commodity and turning a blind eye on recruitment of international migrants represents a continuity practice of migrant labor subordination within the nation-state, originating during colonialism and the advent of capitalism in the nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main goal of this paper is to analyze the spatial behavior of unauthorized migrants in their attempts to irregularly cross the Czech state's 'green' border (including walking trails) into Austria and Germany, between 2005 and 2007. It demonstrates the importance of select demographic and human characteristics of the migrants, as well as the physical features of the environment, in their crossing. Our main premise concerning the importance of smuggling and the more sophisticated means and strategies employed among migrants using smugglers' services (vis-à-vis those without smugglers) was confirmed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Framed within debates on space, youth mobility and globalization, this article examines representations of space in rural youth’s narratives of their own future. In contrast to other research on youth in ‘peripheral’ areas, it is found that positive representations of both own locality and country prevail among the youth in the communities investigated, and that spatial mobility is sought for in limited ways. It is argued that the wish to remain ‘local’ among the youth and their positive views on own locality are in part predicated on relative favourable regional economic conditions, but should also be seen in connection with their increased engagement with global ‘electronic’ youth culture. The representations of rural life at the core of the youth’s expressions of belonging rest on an image of the rural idyll, however, which is often conflated with an image of the perfect middle class family. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]