Paper short abstract:

In this paper I analyze two mechanisms of migration from Romania and the corresponding effects. I deal with migration from regions where the socialist industry collapsed after 1990, producing traumatic social and economic repercussions.

Paper long abstract:

International migration represented one of the main strategies Romanians have used in the past twenty years in order to face impoverishment, rising unemployment, and changing economic relations. Despite the magnitude of this phenomenon and the strong economic effects it produces for the Romanian society, not many studies were carried out to address the effects of migration for the Romanian society. In this paper I analyze two main migration mechanisms and its corresponding effects. I deal with migration from regions where the socialist industry collapsed after 1990, producing traumatic social and economic repercussions. In the first case I researched ethnic Romanians from the northern Transylvania, who used their kinship ties in order to migrate to Milan, Italy, and to adapt to an unregulated labor market. In the second case I dealt with ethnic Croatians from the Western side of Romania, who received Croatian citizenship and migrated to Croatia and later to Austria.

In both cases migrants maintained strong transnational involvement in their origin locale, helping their families by sending remittances. In both cases also people see migration as a profitable activity offering economic stability and a predictable future. However, the effects of migration are rather uneven. Migration produces social cleavages among Romanians, where kinship was the main mechanism of selection and social success, but no detectable tensions among Croatians, where ethnicity provided equal access to migration.