Reaction of Canadian compatriot movement on political events in Czechoslovakia in 1948, 1968 and 1989

Under any political regime compatriot organizations have played a significant role in people's lives who decided to leave Czechoslovakia. In times when freedom and human rights were suppressed, the compatriots were strongly linked by persuasion of a need to fight for democracy restoration in this country. The target of the thesis is to introduce a theoretical concept of the political opportunity structure and apply it to the expatriate movement in Canada. The thesis analyses the activity and deeds of three selected compatriot organizations and examines their reaction on key political events in Czechoslovakia in 1948, 1968 and 1989. By means of these events the work is trying to depict movement`s reaction to opening or closing a political system seen from the perspective of the selected theoretical concept