Young Czech journalist receives European award for article on Mongolian guest workers
On Thursday evening the young journalist Jan Gebert received an award from the European Commission’s “For Diversity. Against Discrimination” campaign. The Czech national prize is for a piece he wrote for the magazine Reflex about Mongolian factory workers in a small town in Moravia. Though the article was published last year, the subject is topical, with the problems posed by rising unemployment among foreign workers making headlines recently.
“At a certain point I started to meet a lot of Mongolian faces on the street. I started to wonder where all those people came from.
“That’s how I picked up the story. I decided to write about Mongolian immigration – what kind of problems Mongolian immigrants are facing in the Czech Republic.”
You covered Mongolian immigrants in a town called Blansko. Are there many towns like that where you’d find a substantial population of Mongolians in the Czech Republic?
“There are more and more places like that. But the reason I picked this place in particular is that it is located in central Moravia, which is traditionally a very ethnically homogenic place.
“And all of a sudden hundreds or maybe thousands of immigrants started to work in one of the biggest factories in town.
“So it changed the ethnic…thing in the town quite a lot, and it also caused some tensions between the locals and the immigrants.”
Before we talk about those tensions, why did they come here to the Czech Republic? Why this country?
“It’s quite a complicated issue. Traditionally, most of the labour immigration to the Czech Republic was from eastern Europe.
“But with the economic boom, for the factories, or for the labour agencies, it became more and more difficult to get people from eastern Europe.
“So they started to chase people wherever they could – mostly in Asia, in Mongolia and in Vietnam.
“The trouble is the government has very little control over these agencies that are bringing people, and the trouble is that these agencies are bringing the highest number possible of people at any cost. They don’t really care if the people that they hire meet the requirements for the job.
“Sometimes these immigrants don’t meet these requirements and they end up on the street, they end up in illegality. And the reason why they come of course is to get some money.”
“It’s a mixture…Mostly these agencies are owned by Czech people or people from Ukraine – and they are collaborating with some people in Mongolia.”
You mentioned some tensions – what tensions in particular have been seen?
“Well, it was quite ridiculous. I think it was two years ago, there was a big demonstration by a xenophobic, nationalist group.
“They said the Mongolian immigrants caused, or were responsible for, a rise in criminality in the town. But the police didn’t confirm that – they denied it.
“I think that the main reason that they held the demonstration was that I think every fortieth inhabitant of the town came to be a Mongolian. That was the true reason, I think.”
Generally speaking, how do the local people get on with the Mongolians and vice versa, regardless of the far-right, or the extremists?
“A lot of people complain that they make a lot of noise…they walk in groups on the street. They are not as quiet as the Vietnamese, let’s say.”
About your report on the Mongolians of Blansko – was it difficult for you to win their trust?
“It was not very difficult, because for most of the people I talked to it was in their own interest to promote this issue and to start up some kind of discussion about it, so they were quite open.
“The only problem was to get some illegal immigrants – that was more difficult because those people are mostly not willing to talk about it very openly because they want to remain in anonymity.”
Another article I read about this subject, not your article, referred to these workers from Mongolia and Vietnam as “slaves” – do you think that’s a fair word?
“That’s a fair word, because like I said these immigrants are hired by private companies, private agencies, and these agencies don’t really care about the conditions under which those immigrants live.
“I mean in terms of living, standards of work, and so on. So they are in the situation of, like, legal slaves.”
“Yeah. It’s a problem of bureaucracy in the Czech Republic, because most of the people who come from outside the European Union have a work permit for a certain job.
“If they are kicked out of this job, they have to find another job within 24 hours. If they don’t manage to do that they end up in illegality, because their permit expires.”
This may sound strange after what you’ve just said, but do they like it here?
“Well, I think most of them expected something else. Most of them expected that the job would be easier and it would be easier for them to get money fast. But that’s not the case.
“Maybe it’s something interesting for them to get familiar with another culture, but I don’t think they think in these terms. They came to get some money and that’s their goal.”
Recently the Czech Republic introduced a green card system and didn’t include workers from Vietnam and Mongolia. What do you think that will mean for those who are already here and those who are perhaps thinking about coming here?
“It can be problematic for some families, because these families can’t be reunited so easily.
“But the reason the government didn’t issue these cards to Vietnam and Mongolia is because of the problems with the Vietnamese and Mongolian immigration that I mentioned before.
“The government doesn’t really know what to do with so many immigrants and now with the economic crisis coming a lot of factories are kicking out a lot of immigrants. And like I say they end up in illegality.
“The government is quite desperate, so the government is now offering them tickets to return to their home countries. That’s the way it is.”
