This dissertation based on a fieldwork conducted among Czech Jewish youth during a ten-days educational touristic program Taglit-Birthright explores production of transnational space of mutual belonging. The transnational belonging to Jewish collective is produced through particular physical space of Israel through practice of tourism in collective constructed by the programme as a collective of common origin based on "blood ties". I examine participants' tourist bodily experience, performances, emotions and attitudes as a site of production and reproduction of transnational space using a concept of embodiment as ways in which the individual grasps the world around him/her and makes sense of it in ways that engage both body and mind. Transnational space created throughout the programme becomes socially constructed emotional category of "ahavat Israel", "love for Israel" that might conceal its political implications. Keywords: Transnationalism, diaspora, tourism, embodiment, Jewish youth, Taglit-Birthright, Czech Republic, Israel

This dissertation based on a fieldwork conducted among Czech Jewish youth during a ten-days educational touristic program Taglit-Birthright explores production of transnational space of mutual belonging. The transnational belonging to Jewish collective is produced through particular physical space of Israel through practice of tourism in collective constructed by the programme as a collective of common origin based on "blood ties". I examine participants' tourist bodily experience, performances, emotions and attitudes as a site of production and reproduction of transnational space using a concept of embodiment as ways in which the individual grasps the world around him/her and makes sense of it in ways that engage both body and mind. Transnational space created throughout the programme becomes socially constructed emotional category of "ahavat Israel", "love for Israel" that might conceal its political implications. Keywords: Transnationalism, diaspora, tourism, embodiment, Jewish youth, Taglit-Birthright, Czech Republic, Israel

This work deals with transnational ties of reemigrated Volhynian Czechs and ethnic return migration of descendants of non-reemigrated Volhynian Czechs. Dissertation was founded on fieldwork in West Ukraine and in the Czech Republic. Researches of reemigrated Volhynian Czechs were studied in terms of integration or adaptation into the Czech (Czechoslovak) society, but this work, in first part, critically shows immigration narrative of Czech (Czechoslovak) social sciences; there were also transnational ties to Ukraine to which reemigrated Volhynian Czech refers as a meaningful. Next part of this work deals with ethnic return migration of descendants of non-reemigrated Volhynian Czechs. Descendants of compatriots have with Ukrainian ethnic consciousness, but Czech state allows them short-term and long-term stays in the Czech Republic thanks to ancestors, so that they are attracted with Czech surroundings, express wishes to migrate into the Czech Republic and they even could obtain permanent residency more easily due to Czech ancestors. Czech state facilitates migration flow from West Ukraine to the Czech Republic according to presume "closeness" of descendants of compatriots to Czech nation. Common reference of Czech social sciences and Czech state is nationalism which products social reality....

1 Abstract This MA thesis discusses contemporary US literature in Czechoslovakia between 1948 and 1956 in order to see how the US was represented through the chosen American writers and their works. The first two chapters look at how the parallel canon was established, both from historical and theoretical perspective. The third chapter discusses Langston Hughes as the representative of American poetry. It shows how Hughes was used to draw attention to racial inequality in the US. Howard Fast as the superstar of the "Czechoslovak America" is the focus of the fourth chapter. The cases of both Fast and Hughes show that contemporary US authors published in Czechoslovakia at that time were chosen for the way they depicted the US racial and social inequality and the repression of political opposition, and identified themselves as members of the so called progressive America. Reading Hughes and Fast from the Eastern side of the Iron Curtain contributes to Czech scholarship on the 1950s and adds new perspectives to the contemporary reconsiderations of American leftist writers.

The subject of this thesis is a diversified conception of Czechishness. The main proposition is a comparison of types and aspects of relation to the country in the case of (political) emigrants after 1948 in contrast with the "home-based" non-emigrant Czech population. The thesis will briefly mention also the preceding periods of Czech emigration, the socio-economic situation at the turn of the 19th and the 20th centuries, the 1950s etc. All this will be put into the context of the historical turning of the Czech lands away from the West, despite the latter being the destination of the post-February emigrants. In this respect the description of social-political events as perceived by the citizens at the time, by the official propaganda and by emigrants is crucial. The image of the West or emigrants as perceived then together with other conclusions will be compared with the basic theories of migration and migration policy. In the section on political emigration legislation of the period incl. its wording will be quoted. The thesis focuses exclusively on emigrants to the West, especially to Western Europe, the USA and Canada, but also to Australia and Israel. It reflects the direction and the main centres of emigration, checks the relevance of information on the numbers of exiled Czechs, their...

and Prague's role within it. It also looks at the cultural relationship between Chapman's journey to Czechoslovakia. The second chapter focuses on the clash bet Chapman and the Czechoslovak intermediaries of US culture such as Josef Škvorecký, Lubomír Dorůžka, and Jan Zábrana and the competing versions of African American poetry, especially in Abraham Chapman's anthology of Black diaspora poetry Černošská : světová antologie

This dissertation is based on a narrative analysis of eighteen life biographies of children of Vietnamese descent in Czech Republic. It shows that these young people lives are embedded in a "transnational social space", which spans between two geographical regions of Vietnam and Czech Republic, and which leaves them exposed to a set of social expectations, cultural values and patterns of human interaction, that are shaped by more than one political, economic and social system. It also describes how these people, through multiple connected social networks and social relationships, transform cultural practices, interpretations, experiences and identities, which deconstructs the idea of integrity between place, identity and culture. Although the primary aim of the work is to analyse how children of Vietnamese operate in transnationalized social and cultural contexts, transnational practices, such as homeland visits, kinship ties and sending remittances are also being explored. In doing so the children of Vietnamese migrants are neither perceived as "existing in vacuum" nor are their identities described as "deterritorialized". The work pays also attention to the question how their lives and identities are shaped on the backdrop of discursive fields and power relationships in particular localities. Key...

This thesis examines the everyday life experiences of Turkish migrants settled in the Netherlands. It analyzes how the Turkish minority perceives their daily lives in the Netherlands in the manner of the identity construction and integration process. The narratives of the migrants are explored in the following ways; media use, language use, attachment to the country of origin, views on identity construction, and integration. Ethnic media use, second language use, and the level of attachment to Turkey are used as indicators for everyday life experiences while integration and identity construction are investigated dependently. Most importantly, this study argues that integration is a two- way process that takes place differently in multiple spheres. For this reason, it analyzes the concept of integration through the voices of the Turkish migrants in the Netherlands rather than focusing solely on the adopted policies. Keywords: Turkish minority, the Netherlands, everyday experiences, integration, identity

This master thesis examines migration issues, focuses on the potential of social remittances, and explores the links between social and financial remittances. The qualitative approach to the research uses the method of semi-structured and in-depth interviews to collect the data in the context of Czechs living in the United Kingdom. This research falls under the concept of transnationalism, uses transnational lenses for exploring processes, and is mainly based upon the concept of social remittances, thus is concerned with flows of norms, know-how, systems of practice, ideas, or social capital from one country to another. This thesis also builds on the expanded conceptualization of social remittances by other researchers. Linking social and financial remittances is done by using the concept of remittance scripts and related activities of migrants. Verbal data from the interviews were analyzed using primarily the inducted method and the method of content analysis. The analyzed results meet the aims of the research and bring a deeper understanding of the potential of social remittances. The factors influencing the potential of social remittances are mainly the work environment of migrants, the importance of unskilled positions, social skills, or intensive transnational links. The key role is also...

My thesis The Benefits of Loss: Life Strategies and Negotiations of Identity amongst Indian Transmigrants in Melbourne, Australia is a study of a community of transmigrants of prevailingly Indian origin who immigrated to Melbourne Australia. The majority of these persons came to Australia on overseas student visas in order to pursue a university education; this later created an opportunity for them to obtain permanent residency in Australia through The General Skilled Migration program. This specific migration flow of persons with high skill and education has been supported by the Australian government in the last decade as a reaction to the increased mobility of population in the globalized world. The study focuses on the life strategies and negotiations of particular individuals attempting to show how these global trends are mediated in specific stages of their lives. At the centre of my interest lies a social network of 14 friends who constitute a transnational community in Melbourne, their motivations of migration, the stories capturing their experiences of the migration process, life strategies in the territory of a foreign nation-state and everyday negotiations of both individual and collective identity.