journalism would certainly try to present the other side of the coin, however catchy and marketable the first, outer side might be. So far, only the Polish mass media care about balanced reporting on the ‘new neighborhood’ and, not surprisingly, it is primarily Polish politicians who treat their eastern neighbors, in most cases, honestly and coherently. They never avoid hot issues (and there are quite a few hot issues between Poland and Ukraine, many more than elsewhere in Europe). But they do not refrain from good words about the diligence of Ukrainian agricultural workers—even if they work illegally; they do not blame Ukrainian teachers in remote Polish villages for the country’s high unemployment; and they do not reduce eastern aliens to the caricature images of The New York Times—perhaps because they know that the neighborhood is not just about a chasing Ukrainians out with Polish versions of the Uzi and smart dogs trained to follow tracks in the woods:
The Ukrainian tourist is a guest who is very much awaited in Poland [Polish radio quotes a government official]. Today we have almost 2m tourists from Ukraine, tourists who come to our country above all for rest. This is a prosperous tourist, a tourist who spends relatively a lot of money in Poland. Zakopane [leading southern mountain resort] and the south of Poland today in great measure live from Ukrainian tourists. But Ukrainian tourists ever more frequently come to the Polish coast, to the Tri-City (Polish Radio 1, 30 June 2005).
As a matter of fact, serious studies reveal today [2007] that only 6% of Ukrainians express intention to emigrate, and only 13% have valid international passports—a far cry from a mass exodus from an impoverished country [Konieczna 2004: 3–5].1 Again, the poverty in Ukraine is a very relative notion (if compared with Africa or South Asia). A nominal average salary in Ukraine of $112 a month is in fact—in adjusted purchasing capacity—five times higher. In practical terms it means that an inhabitant of Kyiv, where the average salary is $400–$600 a month, can afford more or less the same standard set of goods and services as an inhabitant of Moscow, Athens, or Lisbon. Little surprise then, that the capital city, where the unemployment rate is next to zero, has become itself a powerful magnet for labor migrants, from both Ukraine and abroad (mostly from Asia). Such a ‘buffer’ apparently cushions the flow of labor-seekers to the West.
In sum, the Ukrainian immigration ‘threat’ is largely exaggerated. As a matter of fact, reliable studies prove that there are about a million, maximum two million Ukrainians working abroad, with either legal or illegal status. Nearly half of them (41–45%) work in Russia, about 18% in Poland, and about 11% in the Czech Republic. In all these cases not only geographic closeness (cf. the very limited move of Ukrainians to neighboring and visa-friendly Hungary) but also language and cultural proximity prove to be more important than higher salaries in the West. Western countries as destinations for Ukrainian Gastarbeiters lag far behind Ukraine’s immediate neighbors: about 11% of Ukrainian Gastarbeiters work in Italy, 9% in Germany, 7% in Portugal and 7% in Spain. In real numbers, this means around 100,000 workers, and certainly not more than 200,000, in each country.
Virtually all of them work hard and raise no claims to Western welfare. Most of them have no intention to stay permanently in the host country, but typically return to their families in Ukraine with earned money to invest in housing, education of children, or small business. Even those few who decide to stay permanently abroad usually get integrated in the host society, i.e., create no ethnic ghetto, exhibit no welfare parasitism, and certainly prove no susceptibility to religious fundamentalism or Al-Qaeda propaganda. Ironically, the countries where Ukrainian workers are most present, fear the ‘Ukrainian invasion’ much less than the countries where Ukrainians are virtually absent. It was primarily Poland, Portugal and Spain which tended to legalize Ukrainian illegal workers and sign agreements with the Ukrainian government to regulate the inflow, employment and return of Ukrainian, mostly seasonal, laborers.
Xenophobia is primarily a biological, not a sociological phenomenon. It comes from a basic instinct that can be controlled—or not; it can be tamed by culture and education—or released and exploited by populist ideologies and political forces. The second approach is certainly much easier to employ, so there is little surprise that the populist media and glib politicians make a scare-crow of a ‘Polish plumber’ who allegedly takes all the jobs from diligent Frenchmen, and blame the allegedly ‘too soft’ visa regime that reportedly facilitated a large-scale import of Ukrainian prostitutes to Germany in 1999–2001 (even though at the same time dozens of reputable Ukrainian professionals—scholars, journalists, businessmen—were denied visas: a clear sign that it was not a matter of ‘softness’ but, rather, of large-scale corruption, in which German officials had been apparently involved).
It is certainly not so easy to influence the dominant public discourses, but the problem should be definitely addressed and a degree of political correctness and professional responsibility should be established by joint efforts of politicians, journalists, experts, governments and, of course, public intellectuals. So far, it seems they may talk abundantly about Europe as a cultural project and about their common ideals and values, but can hardly spread their wishful thinking beyond their low-circulation books and esoteric journals. Real people who get real news and make real politics know pretty well that Europe ends at the eastern border of the EU. Further east, as the EU official document states, the so-called “European (sic) Neighborhood” begins. Mr. Frits Bolkestein, an EU commissioner, put it unequivocally: “In the east, there is a geo-political need for a buffer zone between the EU and Russia” (Financial Times, 7 March 2004). “In this context [a German scholar comments] the impending shift in the boundary of the EU squares well with an influential macro line-driving exercise, namely the lines drawn by Samuel Huntington in The Clash of Civilizations (1996). For this American, once the EU border has moved eastwards to include Poland there can be no reason to consider any further extension to the east. Eastern Christianity is another civilization, antagonistic to the liberal, pluralist, democratic Europe that Huntington wants passionately to defend. In short, here we have a strong macro argument for a cultural border, for the first time congruent with the political and economic border, and likely to accentuate pressures to consolidate a permanent ‘Fortress Europe’ to the west of the new border” [Hann 2001: 74].
In practical terms, ‘Fortress Europe’ means just a new iron curtain that protects the in-group against the out-group, the European haves against the non-European have-nots. Or, as a Romanian scholar ironically remarks, it is a “new wall that separates Europe from the ‘desert of the Tatars’ to its east”, since “the primordial and immediate interest of EU Europe as regards wider Europe is clear: Guard the borders east and south to prevent immigration and other unwanted flows from and through these marginal countries” [Mungiu-Pippidi 2004: 53].
Such an approach, however, is highly dubious in moral terms since it subverts the very principles the western liberal democratic world is built upon. This world, of course, is very inventive in finding convincing excuses and sophisticated ways to bypass some principles or to accommodate them to the daunting reality. But even in purely practical terms, besides the questionable commitments to elevated words and exalted ideals, the minimalist strategy aimed at containment of ‘odd neighbors’ may require ultimately even more resources than its maximalist alternative aimed at their engagement. In the modern world, where versatile security threats became globalized, firm borders tend to bring less and less help:
“Hard borders are not even very useful for combating cross-border crime. Most experts agree that improving police and security cooperation between countries is a more efficient alternative than hiring lots of border guards or buying expensive surveillance technology” [Zielonka 2004: 29]. “Extensive research shows that numbers of migrants will be limited, and that organized crime is much better fought through targeted, intelligence-led policing in the cities, not border controls and visas alone. Criminals usually have access to passports and forged documents, so new border controls will have a much bigger effect on Ukrainian traders and Belarusian peasants than on organized crime. But politics is often irrational—opportunistic politicians (like Jörg Haider) exploit potent fears of uncontrolled migration, even if these fears
