This article summarises the results of field research carried out in 1998 among families of Czech origin in north-west Kazakhstan. The centre of research was the rural community of Borodinovka, founded in 1911 by emigrants of Czech origin who had already settled in Tsarist Russia in the later 19th century on the territory of what today is the Southern Ukraine. Research was ais o conducted in the industrial town of Aktyubin, where some of the descendents of the Czech emigrants had moved over the years. We likewise visited the village of Meshcheryakovka not far from Orenburg in Russia, where other emigrants of Czech origin has settled at the beginning of the 1990s after leaving Kazakhstan. The text contains a concise history of Czech emigration to Kazakhstan, with a description of characteristic livelihoods, accommodation, food, healing, social and family life. Attention is also devoted to forms of identification with ethnic and national consciousness. The survey shows that the group is a remarkable cultural form in which elements of Russian, Ukrainian, Czech and Kazakh culture interpenetrate. The descendents of Czech emigrants conceptualise some of the particular features in material and spiritual life by which they distinguish themselves from the other groups of the local population as specifically culturally Czech, whether these in fact have their roots in Bohemia or elsewhere conditions. The research suggests that the concept of tradition in social anthropology is highly problematic, since in the conditions of contemporary Kazakhstan and Russia, where there is a struggle formaterial survival, the application of cultural elements that we often call „traditional“ can actuallybe an innovation born of hardship. These are elements relating to self-sufficiency andindependence of a range of public institutions such as canteens, shops, bafories, houses of cultureand so on. Institutional relations have also relaxed in the field of transport and health care, and newforms of commercial exchange are emerging to replace monetary economy. After 1991 when Kazachstan gained independence, much of the non-Kazakh population moved away. In recent years descendents of the Czech emigrants have also been re-emigrating to the Czech Republic and to Russia with their Russian, Ukrainian and other family members. The materials obtained are deepening our knowledge of Czech minorities abroad.
The article looks at the issue of Roma migration from Slovakia and places it in the context of European post-communist migration in the 1990s and migration from eastern to western Europe in the early 21st century. The article is based mainly on qualitative data that the author and his colleagues collected in the form of migration biographies. The author shows that unlike Roma migration from Bulgaria and Romania to western states, migration from the Czech Republic and Slovakia was a delayed occurrence and culminated eight to ten years after the migration from the Balkan states. However, migration between the Czech Republic and Slovakia was continuous, even after the break up of the Czechoslovak state. This form of migration has been a significant migration flow since 1945. It was initially a form of chain migration, with continuous flows that resulted in the creation of linked networks of relatives in both the source and target countries. The migration bridge that was formed as a result now serves a two-way flow of Roma short-term and long-term migration. The author demonstrates that the formation of migration bridges between Slovakia and western European countries within the European Union is similar in nature to the Roma migration from Slovakia to the Czech Republic after 1945. It is a continuous form of chain migration creating transnational bridges for two-way short-term and long-term migration based on family relationships. The author states that individual settlements in Slovakia choose different migration strategies and there are business activities that make migration from Slovakia easier. He notes that many Roma from Slovakia do not conceive migration from Slovakia as permanent migration. The majority of them continue to see their future in connection with their birthplace in Slovakia. It is only the generation of the children of current migrants who have begun to consider emigrating permanently out of Slovakia.