Dr. Dusan Drbohlav, a visiting lecturer, discussed the problems inherent in political and economic changes as well as immigration and migration in Europe yesterday to an audience of approximately 30 people in 101 Fairchild.
Drbohlav is visiting Dartmouth from the Czech Republic where he helps run the geography department's Foreign Study Program. He is a specialist in population and behavioral/social geography and is involved in European Union research projects.
The geography department brought Drbohlav to the United States so he could spend a month in the U.S. examining Dartmouth College and giving lectures and seminars.
"He is here to visit us at our home base," Geography Professor George Demko said.
Yesterday's speech was titled, "Demographic Problems and Policies in Central Europe in 1996."
Drbohlav began by discussing the origins of the current political status of Eastern Europe.
"It is a transition from totalitarianism and discreditable systems into capitalistic ones that are prosperous," he said.
"It was a transformation to liberalization, privatization and restructuring of enterprise," he said.
Drbohlav cited what he called "a strong interest" in joining organizations such as NATO or the European Union as evidence of the transformation.
Drbohlav grouped Eastern Europe into three categories based on economic stability. The first group consisted of Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia. The second included Bulgaria, Romania, the Baltic Republics and Albania. while "the rest" comprised the third group.
Various "push and pull" factors made groups from "the rest" and the second group tend to migrate towards the first group, according to Drbohlav.
"Geographic position, social-economic situation, political situation, and demographics tended to be the determinants of migration," Drbohlav said.
Drbohlav went on to describe various migrating trends that led to the migration of both legal and illegal immigrants.
He discussed labor, circular migration and transit migration.
He compared the problems of illegal immigration in Central Europe to the problems that America is experiencing with immigration from Mexico.
"Traffickers exploit illegal migrants who pay dearly while on the move," Drbohlav said referring to the hardships endured while in transit.
Drbohlav enumerated the policies that governments used to keep out illegal immigrants such as punishing those who employ illegal immigrants and deporting.
In discussing the future, Drbohlav described both a "harmonious development with enlargement of European Union" and "war with the Soviet Union" as scenarios both likely and unlikely to result from demographic problems.
"We need more democracy, more information and more cooperation," he said.
Drbohlav is a lecturer and researcher at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic. He is the foreign administrator for the Geography FSP which is now in its third year. He will be at Dartmouth until Saturday when he leaves for Columbia, SC and Charlotte, NC for a week-long geography conference.
