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 are unfounded” [Grabbe 2001: 42].
In sum, we should probably recognize that Europe would never become a genuinely cultural project, as Denis de Rougemont and other Kulturliterati envisaged. There is too much of Realpolitik around, too much of ‘might makes right’ and ‘charity begins at home’. There are too powerful forces and too strong temptations to make project Europe genuinely political and economic. And this is why we should still produce our low-circulation books and esoteric journals, and carry out our discussions on European culture, identity, and solidarity. We cannot complete our idealistic project but we can probably rescue it from ultimate degradation.
For Ukrainians and other East European nations who have been cynically (‘pragmatically’) excluded from Europe as a political project, culture remains the only field where they can cherish their imaginary Europeanness, and look for symbolic resources that might enhance their resistance to the dark neo-Soviet/neo-imperial forces that loom large in the East. Again and again, they should refer to Norman Davies’ encouraging dictum: “The right to be referred to as to ‘Europe’ (…) cannot be granted to just one part of the continent. Eastern Europe has never ceased to be European only because it was poor, underdeveloped, or ruled by tyrants. On the contrary, due to the fact that it was deprived of so many things, it became more European, more attached to the values that may be taken for granted by more prosperous citizens of the West” (Tygodnik Powszechny 18, 1992).
The impressive Orange Revolution in Ukraine, otherwise unexplainable, came fully in line with these perspicacious words, as well as with Adam Zagajewski’s earlier deliberations—relevant, as it appeared, not only in Central but also in Eastern Europe: “Soviet Russia has created some very strange things in our part of Europe. It has created informants, liars, censors, and bums who don’t feel like working. But at the same time, without wanting to, it has produced wonderful things in people who by the grace of God are stronger, and somehow more noble. It has aroused in them a wild hunger for truth, freedom, dignity, books, paintings … for Europe. And this is exactly how Europe exists in Central Europe—as a Europe of the imagination, of delusion, of hope, of hunger … The enormous cultural longing felt so strongly in our part of Europe is one of the paradoxical consequences of ‘Sovietization’” [1987: 21].
However critical we might