Labor Migration Programs within the Socialist Bloc. Cuban Guestworkers in Late Socialist Czechoslovakia and Hungary

0545384 - ÚSD 2022 RIV US eng J - Journal Article
Vondráková Bortlová, Hana - Szente-Varga, M.
Labor Migration Programs within the Socialist Bloc. Cuban Guestworkers in Late Socialist Czechoslovakia and Hungary.
Labor History. Roč. 62, č. 3 (2021), s. 297-315. ISSN 0023-656X. E-ISSN 1469-9702
Institutional support: RVO:68378114
Keywords : international relations * Cold War * labor migration
OECD category: History (history of science and technology to be 6.3, history of specific sciences to be under the respective headings)
Impact factor: 0.632, year: 2021
Method of publishing: Limited access
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0023656X.2021.1908972

Cuba’s accession to the Comecon in 1972 opened an opportunity for the Socialist Bloc countries to involve citizens of the Caribbean island in their respective labor migration programs. Since the end of the 1970s, thousands of Cubans annually were coming to Czechoslovakia to work. Since 1981, hundreds of them arrived annually in Hungary, too. The article contextualizes the labor migration program in both countries and offers groundwork on this topic hitherto unstudied. It also addresses issues such as working and housing conditions, salary policies, social life and social interaction of Cuban guestworkers with local populations. The text covers mostly the 1980s and is framed by the intergovernmental agreements on the employment of Cubans. The authors suggest that labor migration programs in the Socialist Bloc were triggered by factors similar to those in the West (especially labor shortage) and that some of the accompanying social phenomena in the ‘capitalist’ and ‘socialist’ world were not dissimilar.
Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0322085