Together with the exhibition Work is Elsewhere and the accompanying catalogue, this website is one of the main outcomes of the project How Many Paths to Florenc?, which brought together 32 photographers and researchers from the Czech Republic, Germany, Great Britain, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Taiwan, Ukraine and the United States.
Paired in teams of two, the project participants documented the sixteen stories assembled in this publication throughout the summer of 2006. At the centre of all stories are people, who, for various reasons and in various directions, travel to work. Combining the traditions of documentary photography with anthropological research, the project participants were looking less for outstanding stories of individuals, but more for persons, stories and travel routes that represent important streams of labour migration.
The project How Many Paths to Florenc? is realised as a co-operation of the Multicultural Centre Prague, Rejs e.V. (Berlin), the Prague School for Film and Television (FAMU), Ostrava University, EURES Czech Republic and the Counselling Centre for Citizenship, Civil and Human Rights within the frame of the European Year of Workers‘ Mobility and supported by the European Commission.
What is the background of this European Year; and how does our independent project relate to the objectives formulated by the European Commission?
INEQUALITY AND MOBILITY The best possible starting point for this discussion is the issue of inequality. Undoubtedly, the European unification process has the potential to create greater equality between the member states. However, in the shadow of this positive development, new faces of inequality are appearing.
One of these faces is the increasingly noticeable division between the EU member states and those countries, which are too poor and instabile to join the European project. Confronted with new restrictions on travel, Ukrainians, Moldovans, along with the other nations left outside, have little reason for celebrating the accession of eight post-communist countries’, especially when it is heralded as the “continent’s reunification”.
A second, maybe less noticeable, face of inequality is the growing divide between succesful and disadvantaged regions within the European Union. As demonstrated by contrasting economically troubled regions like Eastern Germany, Northern Bohemia, Eastern Slovakia, or North Eastern England and the booming economies of Bavaria, Prague, Bratislava or South-East England, these increasing regional differences can often be found within the same state and are reflected in the unemployment and income rates.
In the United States, the contrast between growing and decaying regions has led to large movements of people. On average, Americans move almost twice as often as Europeans. From the perspective of the Czech Republic, where people are even less mobile than the average Europeans, it is striking to observe how American mobility alters the continent’s geography; on the one hand there are the booming “Sun Belt” states, where the population is dramatically increasing, whilst on the other hand there are the farming counties of the Great Plains or the many old-industrial centres, which have turned into ghost towns due to a dramatic exodus of buissnesses and inhabitants.
Many economists explain the American economy’s strong performance on the greater mobility of its workforce. From such a perspective, Europe’s striking differences in regional unemployment rates are not the result of inadequate regional development programmes, but symptoms of Europeans’ lacking ability to adapt to changing economic and geographic patterns. The result is a geographical mismatch between labour supply and demand, which leads to expensive welfare transfers and regional shortages of labour which act as a brake to economic growth.
MOBILITY AS A POLITICAL GOAL Aiming to transform the European Union into the world’s “most competetive economic sphere”, the European Council passed the Lisbon Strategy in 2000. One of the strategies established in this document was the support of labour mobility. One might see this as quite a remarkable change in policy; did not the fear of uncontrollable labour migration from Central and Eastern Europe represent one of the most difficult obstacles to EU enlargement? Isn’t one of the aims of the structural policy to prevent a brain-drain from marginalised regions? And aren’t the member states’ border guards co-operating intensively to block the way for would-be labourers from countries like Ukraine, Bosnia, or Morocco?
One explanation for these apparent inconsistencies is the disagreements between the European Commission and individual member states. Living in a continent where the fear of the migrant worker has for decades belonged to the folklore of every election campaign, many citizens associate increasing labour mobility negatively, with threats such as increasing competition, loss of local identities or even a rise in crime.
Another explanation for the observed inconsistencies in public policies are legitimate questions about the effects of a more mobile way of life; can the centres of economic growth cope with the influx of migrants; what will happen to marginalised areas, if the youngest and most productive people leave; and what consequences has the demand for flexibility on family ties and social networks?
A third, important explanation is the distinction between EU citizens and citizens from “third” countries. This distinction is mirrored in the European Union’s usage of the words “mobility” and “migration”. Defined as the movement of EU citizens to other countries or within their home country, the EU aims to promote “labour mobility” as something positive. This is different to how the the word “migration” is used, as it appears mostly in the context of control and prevention, and most often when referring to persons from non-EU countries who are seeking to enter what critics describe as “fortress Europe”.
DEBATING MOBILITY The above-outlined questions and dilemmas signal that there is an urgent need to debate the phenomenon of labour mobility in a wider context. Seeking to contribute to this debate, the project “How Many Paths to Florenc?” refused to accept limitations that would arise from arbitrary definitions, such as the opposition of the terms “labour mobility” and “migration”.
This approach is mirrored in the selection of the sixteen persons portrayed in the project. The largest group are the five stories of people from the Czech Republic and Slovakia working in Western Europe. This largest block is followed by three groups: three stories of Slovaks living and working in the Czech Republic; three stories of Czechs who commute within their own country; and three stories of people from Moldavia and Ukraine, who are living and working in member states of the European Union. The story of Vasile, who came as a fifteen year old boy from his Romanian village to a place close to Madrid, could be included in the last section. However, unlike Ludmila, Ion, and Halyna, the other migrants from beyond the European Union, Vasile will soon become an EU citizen after his home country was accepted into the Union. However, as shown in this catalogue through the story of Zuzana (a Slovak working semi-legally in Austria as a caretaker), being an EU citizen does not necessarily mean the full enjoyment of the right of free movement. It seems a particular paradox, that the European Union is dedicating a year to labour mobility, whilst at the same time some of its member states enact temporary regulations that block citizens from the new member states from practising this very mobility.
As indicated already, with the example of Vasile, our research results supported our expectation that definitions and dividing lines are much less clear than they might appear upon the first viewing. Some of the stories also demonstrate that the force that drives mobility is not always the expectation of economic benefits. While some left their home because of a lack of opportunities, others, such as the French-Scottish couple living in the Czech city of Brno, went in search of new experiences or a different way of life.
We want to thank first and foremost of all those who accepted to be photographed and interviewed, as well as, of course, the project participants for their time and enthusiasm. We hope that their personal stories may help us to better understand both people who migrate as well as the phenomenon of migration itself.
Jakob Hurrle, Multicultural Centre Prague
Stephanie Endter, Plotki – rumours from around the bloc