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Abstract
This article reports on research carried out within the scope of the Inco-Copernicus Programme, from 1999 to 2002, on ‘Health and Well-Being in Transition Societies’. In particular, it presents the results of a qualitative study carried out in the Ukraine. On the basis of in-depth interviews and two biographical interviews, data are analysed on the following topics: employment situation, informal economy, perception of health and well-being, perception of social services, perception of social exclusion, crisis and low expectations, coping strategies, and perceptions of citizens’ rights. It concludes that transition has meant important change that has had a significant effect upon the Ukrainian population.
Este artigo refere-se a uma pesquisa desenvolvida no âmbito do Programa Inco-Copernicus, de 1999 a 2002, sobre ‘Saúde e Bem-Estar em Sociedades de Transição’. Em particular, apresenta resultados de um estudo qualitative desenvolvido na Ucrânia. Com base em entrevistas aprofundadas e em duas entrevistas biográficas, os dados são analisados de acordo com os seguintes tópicos: situação face ao emprego, economia informal, percepção de saúde e bem-estar, percepção de exclusão social, crise e baixas expectativas, estratégias de enfrentamento (‘coping strategies’) e percepç[otilde]es dos direitos dos cidadãos. Conclui-se que a transição representou uma mudança importante que teve um efeito significativo na população ucraniana.
Notes
The four partners making up the research team were STAKES (Helsinki, Finland), which acted as the co-ordinating institution, the University of Petrozavodsk (Karelia, Russia), the Kiev International Institute of Sociology (Mohyla Academy, Kiev, Ukraine) and the Association for Development and Formation (Oporto, Portugal).
The post-graduate students from the Mohyla Academy were Viktoriya Labyntseva, Olena Suslova, Ivanna Tkach, Nadiya Kabachenko, Oleksandr Prybaten, Oksana Boyko, Leonid Vlasenko and Radyslav Petriv. Work with this group resulted from collaboration with Mohyla Academy over a period of more than 10 years which was made possible by Tempus Tacis and Tempus Compact programmes both led by Professor Shulamit Ramon from Cambridge Polytechnic University. Special thanks are due to Oksana Boyko for her secretarial work in making the meetings possible and for supervising a complex translation process from both Russian and Ukrainian into English. A special word of thanks finally to the translator of our meetings in Kiev, Dennis Poltavets.
There exists quite an extensive literature on the theme of Eastern European ‘transition societies’ (see, for example, Deacon, Citation1992a, Citation1992b; Gotting, Citation1994; ILO, Citation1995; Standing, Citation1998). We do not go into this literature in any detail in this article for our aim is to concentrate, in the space available, on the data produced by the qualitative study. In this sense, the meaning of ‘transition’, normally related to what Deacon (Citation1992b, p. 1) refers to as ‘transition to market economies and political pluralist systems’, is constructed inductively rather than being imposed on the data from the beginning.
These conclusions, although inevitably tentative in nature due to the size of the qualitative sample and due to the fact that the interviewees were not selected randomly, are also backed up by the results of the quantitative survey referred to above (see Final Report, Citation2003) and by the homogeneity of the responses by a considerably varied population.