State policy on emigration and diasporas in Ukraine

Abstract

The dissolution of the socialist system in the early 1990s resulted in crucial quantitative and qualitative transformations in post-Soviet society. One of the determinants of the status of a person in a newly-shaped social hierarchy was individual mobility: social, economic, occupational, and geographical1 . The propensity for economic mobility, in search of employment became an indispensable survival skill for millions of impoverished people2 . Hence, an increasing transnationalism has been observable in society, accompanied by a growing wave of emigration. According to IOM3 , in absolute numbers, the pull of Ukrainian nationals residing abroad approached 6 million, while BMP data4 are even more impressive – 10 million.