Paper Short Abstract:

The return migration of Romanian immigrants is a sphere exploited by the far-right movement to create the demonised 'other'. These movements fabricate return migration as the ultimate solution in an idealised society 'protected' against the stereotypical Western culture.

Paper Abstract:

Caught in a floating sense of space (Marcu, 2020), with many unsuccessful tentatives of relocating permanently back home that turn into perpetual remigration paths, Romanian immigrants are a desirable target for extremist discourses. This paper aims to explore how political parties use polycrises to obtain political gains and votes for future elections.

Romania has large diasporic communities in Western Europe, encompassing transnational, short-term, long-term, or permanent migrants. Many of them leave their home country to fulfil a financial goal—often materialised as a permanent home in Romania—and plan to return afterwards.

Far right Romanian parties, along with orthodox organisations supporting their agenda, sketch the demonised ‘other’ (Nagata, 2001) in relation to Romanian immigrants from two perspectives, exploiting the impact polycrisis has on this group. On the one hand, they challenge the current governing political field, which supposedly does not provide any reasons for members of the Romanian diaspora to return in terms of education, health, social security, or financial benefits. On the other hand, the European Union, where many of these people live and work, is seen as the bigger, demonic organism that, in the context of health, energy, and financial crises, only benefits from the cheap work force provided by Romanian citizens without returning equal benefits for them.

In this context, these parties seek to capitalise on the lack of belonging sentiments in Romanian immigrants, fabricating return migration in an idealised society governed by them as the ultimate solution.