Issue 2, Vol. 113 (2026)

Everyday experiences of cross-border environmental conflicts are frequently overlooked in legal, institutional, and policy-oriented analyses. Based on a qualitative narrative analysis of interviews, situational conversations, and public texts collected between 2019 and 2022 in the Czech–Polish borderland, this article examines how local actors on both sides of the border narrated the dispute over the Turów lignite mine. Focusing on narratives of water, work, energy security, institutional trust, and belonging, the analysis shows how competing moral economies structured perceptions of responsibility, legitimacy, and normality. The findings demonstrate that while everyday cross-border practices largely endured, the conflict reshaped the symbolic and emotional foundations of coexistence. By approaching narratives as everyday cultural practices rather than strategic rhetoric, the article contributes to ethnological and anthropological understandings of borders as lived and narrated spaces.

The lives of highly skilled migrants are often seen as unproblematic due to their education and experience, yet this view is misleading. Based on 73 in-depth interviews this article examines key challenges faced by
highly skilled migrants in four sectors in Czechia: academia, corporate business, ICT, and healthcare. The findings show that their situation is far from satisfactory and varies across sectors. While language barriers play an important role in healthcare, migrants in academia face insufficient funding to cover basic needs. The study also identifies differences linked to migrants’ previous personal experiences. Based on the experiences of the interviewed migrants, several policy recommendations are proposed to better support the development and utilization of the full potential of highly qualified migrants.

The article examines debates on foundlings in Bohemia and in the Habsburg Monarchy during the 19th century. It traces the transformation of foundling hospitals from Enlightenment-inspired institutions for poor pregnant women and their children into contested social institutions criticized for high mortality, financial costs, and alleged moral consequences. The study focuses on how foundling hospitals were represented in contemporary medical, social, philanthropic, and literary texts. Using approximately 40 publications from the period 1848–1916, it analyzes the arguments employed by their authors. The article demonstrates that debates gradually shifted from concerns about unmarried mothers to an increasing emphasis on children’s welfare.

The article presents a quantitative analysis of the development and basic characteristics of all Jewish cemeteries in the Czech Lands that existed after the First World War (399 sites) or were established during the “short” 20th century (15 sites). While in the interwar period older development tendencies continued largely uninterrupted and burying Jews outside their own cemeteries started, the periods of Nazi and Communist rule halted the development of Jewish cemeteries. The vast majority of Jewish cemeteries were damaged, and under a quarter were completely destroyed. While the destructive tendencies of the Nazi regime were direct and explicit, their relatively short duration often prevented the complete liquidation. The more hidden influence of communism and its lack of interest in this type of heritage was amplified by its long duration. Only after 1989 did the restoration of the existing Jewish cemeteries (326 sites) and their remains (33 sites) begin on a significant scale.

This study examines the symbolic dimension of far-right extremism in Slovakia during the 2015 migration crisis. It explores how nationalist and extremist movements, such as the People’s Party – Our Slovakia (ĽSNS) and affiliated groups, appropriated historical and visual symbols online and in public spaces to construct narratives of cultural and national threat. Drawing on Mary Douglas’s theory of purity and danger and an ethnographic analysis of migration-related Facebook content, the study suggests that these symbols delineate boundaries between the “pure” in-group and the “impure” other, with Muslims increasingly occupying roles historically attributed to Jews in antisemitic discourse. The research suggests continuities between historical antisemitic imagery and contemporary Islamophobic rhetoric in the Slovak far right, demonstrating how traditional hate symbols are recontextualized to normalize xenophobia.