Current issue

At the end of the 1940s, a wave of many thousands of Greek refugees fled their country, which was torn by civil war, for Czechoslovakia. Around thirty years later, there was a political change in Greece that allowed the refugees to return to their homeland. In the meantime, however, a new generation of Greeks had grown up in Czechoslovakia who did not remember their parents’ country and had never even visited. This article is situated within the theoretical framework of research on return migration. It traces the differences in the presentation of narratives on motivations to migrate back “home” of those who migrated. It also addresses the research field of transnationalism, and the author inquires into whether the narrators maintain any form of cross-border ties to the country from which they migrated.

This text focuses on aspects of the integration process of immigrants from the perspective of intercultural workers. It explores how intercultural workers perceive and understand integration in the Czech Republic, with a special emphasis on their interpretation of what makes a successfully integrated immigrant. The research was conducted using qualitative methodology. Our conclusions indicate the predominance of a dualistic view of integration based on the acquisition of Czech language skills and the achievement of self-sufficiency. A different approach to integration casts doubt on prioritizing fluency in the local language. It stresses the threat of exclusion that such an approach may generate for individuals who require more time to learn Czech or who do not master it perfectly. This research contributes to understanding the integration of immigrants and reveals a complex interplay of language, self-reliance, cultural prejudices, and the role of intercultural workers in it.

The study discusses the applied research conducted by the author in Rwanda. The aim was to confirm or refute the basic thesis of the key relevance of situational factors for the construction of dehumanization and the initiation of mass violence in Rwandan society in general. The respondents in the field research were perpetrators and victims of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Semi-structured interview was chosen as the qualitative research method.

The article deals with beekeeping in Bohemia, and marginally also in Moravia, in the period between the16th and18th century, more precisely until 1789, when the first purely Czech beekeeping manual entitled Aučinlivé spravování včel pro obecného krajana v Království českém by Josef Antonín Janiš was published. Until now, we have believed that Janiš was the first to introduce extension beekeeping in Bohemia, in log hives. The author shows, however, that in the period preceding his writings, far from being a primitive method of keeping beehives in log hives, the industry had many forms and local differences depending on various subjective and objective conditions, among which the knowledge, experience and capabilities of the beekeeper, the types of hives used, the conditions of theirs habitat can be counted. The aim of the work is to introduce the sources to a hitherto unprocessed period of the beekeeping industry with practices often bizarre, reflecting the extinct zootechnics.