Multicultural and Multiracial Europe: Rotterdam, Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa

Establishing a New Right to the Ukrainian City
Author: Blair A. Ruble

"Independent Ukraine has become a fluid country into and out of which tens of thousands of people have been moving for nearly two decades. According to some estimates, 2.5 million Ukrainians have moved abroad—primarily to Russia, Poland, Italy, the Czech Republic, Portugal and Spain—to live and to work since 1991, sending home $411 million in remittances in 2004 alone. Simultaneously, Ukraine has become a country of immigration as well as emigration. According to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs Population Division, in 2005, Ukraine ranked fourth in the world behind the United States, Russia, and Germany in terms of the total number of foreign born residents (6,833,000). More tellingly, Ukraine that year was nineteenth in the world—between Austria and Croatia—in terms of its percentage of foreign born residents (14.7 percent). Thus, independent Ukraine has emerged as one of the world’s leading migration magnets."

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Photo credit: New Mayor of Rotterdam, Ahmed Aboutaleb. (c) amsterdam.nl.