Amfiteatru Economic (Aug 2017)
Book review for Y. Bilan “Migration of Ukrainian Population. Economic, Institutional and Sociocultural Factors”
Abstract
The issue of migration of the Ukrainian population is an increasingly significant and current research problem, not only from the viewpoint of this country, but also due to the current situation in the European Union countries, all facing the problems of depopulation and aging, and increasing structural gaps in their labour market. Against this background, it seems that the book ”Migration of Ukrainian population. Economic, institutional and sociocultural factors”, author Yuriy Bilan, matches the demand of a European reader. It turns out that the movement of the Ukrainian population is not only topical for today issue, but it has already certain history and left a visible footprint on the demographic and socioeconomic situation of the country. However, for current Ukrainian situation the significant role has played the migration after the fall of the "iron curtain". At that time, significant increase in the migration activity of Ukrainian society have been caused by the liberalization of legal restrictions on travelling on the one hand, and on the other, the migration was pushed by huge economic and labour disparities between Eastern and Western Europe (Yeleyko, 2007, p. 403). The situation has changed at the later phase of the Ukrainian state transition (2000-2010) when there was observed stabilization of the migrations scale. Currently, significant increase of migration volumes from Ukraine have been observed, especially in the context of the current political situation in Eastern Ukraine, the very likely probability of further instability accompanied by economic downturn and fundamental changes at Ukrainian labour market, especially in terms of wages, currency exchange and price conditions that are the main factors of labour migration. Taking into account the population potential of Ukraine, its location in the neighbourhood of the European Union, surely, all these issues should be of interest to researchers and readers from Western Europe.
