Abstract
The Monograph deals with the Russian community in the Czech Republic. The Russian community has a number of specifics.
The aim of the study is to identify these differences, examine the evolution of integration indicators in the past five years and to find out opinions, attitudes and life experience of Russians in the CR. From the methodological point of view the study is based on two approaches.
The first one presents an analysis of quantitative data - integration indicators with a focus on Russian community the second one is based on qualitative semi-structured interviews with Russian immigrants in the Czech Republic. Russians represent third largest community of immigrants in the CR.
An important reason for residence of Russians in the Czech Republic is family reunification. A characteristic feature of the Russian community is enormous interest for study in the Czech Republic.
On the contrary in comparison with other nationalities, an employment is less frequent reason for the residence in the CR. Russian subpopulation is characterized by a high proportion of women.
Most Russian immigrants have a relatively high socio-economic status. The interviews highlighted the importance of the existence of the Russian community for the Russian immigrants in the CR.
The survey shows that from the perspective of social integration, the greater part of respondents desire to integrate into Czech society. Nevertheless it was identified risk groups in terms of integration: the children of immigrants who attend Russian schools (with no or minimal teaching the Czech language and Czech realia), housewives and pensioners, who live especially in a "Russian environment".
Also employees working in the so-called "ethnic economy" may be a vulnerable group. Unbalanced concentration of Russians in the Czech Republic may also contribute to segregation of Russian immigrants.