I do understand the issue, completely. However, what you're not getting is that continuing to use old systems is a security problem.
Look, I grasp that this makes life harder. Especially if you're used to migrating databases between systems. But, there are mitigating factors here.
First, you should find ways to stop doing that. Test and dev systems are not production systems. In my 16 years of experience, I have never used "real" data in a test or dev environment. That's just not done. Production data should stay in production, period. It's a simple rule.
Second, insecure systems are insecure, and like it or not, using the MySQL "utf8" character set causes unusual and difficult to solve security problems. Upgrading fixes those. So, upgrade. I realize that you lack control over versions used. But it's still true, whether you like that fact or not. Sorry.
If you feel like discussing this further, you can email me at any time and I'll happily try to explain it in more detail. My email is otto at wordpress dot org.
WordPress went to *extreme* lengths to mitigate the issue here. Getting as many people as possible onto safe database schemas is part of that.