Ukrainian Migrants in the European Union: a Comparative Study of the Czech Republic and Italy

This paper aims to provide a comparative analysis of links between personal characteristics and remittance behavior as well as to investigate the determinants of integration and to validate the remittance decay hypothesis in the target country 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 attached to Ukrainian labor migrants in the EU and their families in Ukraine. Our findings show that migration characteristics of one ethnic group or nation reveal the same patterns regardless of the target country. It appears that remittance behav** Corresponding author Sociologija i prostor, 52 (2014) 199 (2): 141-166 142 S o c i o l o g i j a i p r o s t o r ior of Ukrainian migrants in the Czech Republic and Italy is significantly determined by their financial situation, demographic characteristics, level of human capital and level of integration as well as specific context characteristics. Moreover, our findings provide evidence for the fact that those Ukrainian migrants who are more settled in a target country tend to send fewer or no remittances back to their home country.