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Studies and research
- Financial education of foreigners
- Discrimination and media
- Media and Minorities: The Media Image of Foreigners and Ethnic and National Minorities in the Czech Republic (2002-2003)
- Hard to Make out Refugees (2002)
Financial education of foreigners
Foreigners arriving in the Czech Republic must deal with a number of issues including housing, employment or establishment of business, healthcare, education, etc. Dealing with such issues is closely related to money management and it is therefore important that foreigners have enough correct and relevant information about the Czech banking sector and financial services it provides.
This project aims at giving foreigners information about the Czech banking system and explaining legends and myths that circulate among foreigners with little knowledge of the Czech language. The project should help prevent social and economic exclusion of foreigners and contribute to their successful integration.
The Multicultural Center Prague implements this project in cooperation with banking professionals, migration experts, social workers and foreigners. The ultimate objective was to publish a "Guidebook to financial services in the Czech Republic for foreigners" and make it available in print and on the Internet. The guidebook was published in Czech, English, German, Russian, Ukrainian and Vietnamese to help foreigners whose Czech is not adequate.
The guidebook contains general information about banking in the Czech Republic as well as specific information about basic banking and financial products offered by selected banks and perceived as important from the point of view of foreigners living in the Czech Republic including current account, mortgage, international money transfers, etc.
Publication in all languague versions is available for download at www.migraceonline.cz/finance. Free copy could be also picked up from office of Multicultural Center Prague.The project, which has received financial support from the Citigroup Foundation 
, kicked off in June 2005 and ended in March 2006.
For more information, please contact Hana Žáková Petrová at projekt@mkc.cz
Discrimination and media
Multicultural Center Prague is a partner of Counselling Centre for Citizenship, Civil and Human Rights in a project Discrimination and media sponsored by the foundation NROS. The basic aim of the MKC‘s part of the project is to point out different forms of discrimination of marginalized groups in the media and to fight against it. The range of the vulnerable groups is restricted according to the mission of the MKC mostly to the ethnic or religious minorities, such us muslims, Romas or refugees. Most of the outputs will be published on the thematic section “Discrimination and media” of the website www.migrationonline.cz.
Activities:
Duration: 11/2005 – 10/2006
Contact: Eva Burgetová
phone/fax: 296 325 346
E-mail: migrace@mkc.cz
Media and Minorities: The Media Image of Foreigners and Ethnic and National Minorities in the Czech Republic (2002-2003)
Our worldview is to a large extent shaped by the media. But information provided by the media can sometimes be distorted or incomplete. What do we think about foreigners and what information about them do we receive from the media? These questions were at the heart of Media and Minorities: the Media Image of Foreigners and Ethnic and National Minorities in the Czech Republic, a project organized by the Multicultural Center Prague.
The project's main result was the report "Hard to Make out Foreigners: How Foreigners Are (not) Written About" which focused on the way foreigners and various ethnic and national minorities are presented in the media, the context of reporting and whether we learn about their lives in the Czech Republic and the reasons why they decided to come here. Our goal was to find out whether information presented by the media is sufficient for people to develop an "objective" opinion about the life of foreigners. The report was commissioned by the Multicultural Center Prague and written by the sociologists Petra Klvačová and Tomáš Bitrich.
We have presented the conclusions of the research at public debates with panelists from the ranks of journalists and foreigners, at Interculturality and the Media, a course attended by teachers of civics and related classes, and finally at a conference of librarians. The results were also made available to students of media studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences of Charles University who frequented a specialized and optional one-semester seminar.
The Czech and English book Hard to Make out Foreigners contains an abridged version of the final report, commentaries by media experts, contributions by foreigners living in the Czech Republic, glossary and address book. The book is available from our library or you can download it from www.mkc.cz. It has also been distributed to 500 libraries across the Czech Republic.
Project partners: Newton IT, Center for Media Studies and the Mass Communication Department of Charles University, Youth for Intercultural Understanding (MIP), POLIS and the Counseling Center for Integration.
Project coordinator: Barbora Hořavová
E-mail: fondy@mkc.cz
Hard to Make out Refugees (2002)
In 2002, the Multicultural Center Prague commissioned a research study of coverage of refugees by the Czech Republic's main dailies. The study is based on an analysis of 200 randomly selected articles published in the course of one year in MF Dnes, Lidové noviny and Právo.
The study is divided into five chapters with the first chapter explaining selection methodology. What follows is a brief overview of the three newspapers based on the types of articles they published and the sections in which the articles appeared. The main analysis has two sections, one that examines the topics of articles about refugees and the context in which refugees are discussed, and one that attempts to answer the question of what image of migrants is presented in the analyzed articles. The final chapter proposes a number of ways in which the issue of refugees should be further examined and discussed.
The three papers do not communicate a negative image of refugees, but they do not communicate a positive one, either - rather, the image is incomplete and mediated as so blurred that it is insufficient to form stereotypes. What the articles lack is a refugee perspective; instead of informing about the lives, values and features of refugees, the selected articles impart opinions of Czech institutions and citizens. Refugees are presented through their problems and this is reflected in the selection of sources used by journalists.
Authors: Petra Klvačová and Tomáš Bitrich
The study has been partially financed by the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic.
Project coordinator: Lenka Simerská
