How many Romanians abroad? Are departures from the country increasing or decreasing? How to measure the number of Romanians abroad, by citizenship or place of birth, with or without an indication of the calculation algorithm? How big is the Romanian diaspora?

Of course, there are many questions on this topic in the public space of Romania, as a country of outflow, where the number of departures significantly exceeds the number of arrivals. The context in which the discussion takes place concerns the demographic decline, the labor crisis in certain sectors of the economy and the poor functioning of public institutions. These are all factors that determine emigration, but also negatively affect return. I’m trying to put some points of reference in context. Of course, the number of emigrants and the trend are of great importance.

However, the vagueness of the topic complicates the situation even more

The first idea we support is to open a complementary approach, focusing not on “how many Romanians are abroad”, but on the poles of attractiveness of long-term or short-term Romanian emigrants. Regardless of how many millions of Romanians have left the country, it is important to know the place, the national space, to which they are heading. The more knowledge we have about such a detail, the more prepared we can be – if we really want, of course – to initiate a migration development policy.

From the total number to the poles of gravity

Instead of the hard-to-reach knowledge of all Romanians scattered all over the globe, it is more effective to have in mind primarily six countries, let’s call them the “hexagon”, where Romanians mostly go. According to the latest OECD data for 2022, it is primarily Italy, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom.

They were joined by France and Austria with less but significant appeal. In 2022, approximately 87% of Romanian citizens abroad who left for/more than a year were in these six countries (Table 1). If we want, for various reasons, to count not by citizenship, but by place of birth, the corresponding percentage is lower, about 77% of the total number of Romanian emigrants.

Of course, if you use information sources other than the OECD (EUROSTAT, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Romania, INS, etc.), the figures may be different. Especially those related to general migration departures. Regardless of the source, however, the percentages are the same.

When we talk about the “hexagon of emigration directions”, we actually mean the system (Massey et al. 1999) that works in the migration attraction of Romanians. Within the framework of such a system, departure from the country and migration movement of Romanians outside the country is carried out. The hierarchy between the countries of the “hexagon” has changed. In 2014, for example, Spain was in second place as a force of attraction for Romanians. Later, however, this place returns to the attractiveness of Germany. In any case, the core components of the maximum migration attractiveness of Romanians remain relatively constant.

The aforementioned poles of attraction stimulate the regional selectivity of short-term temporary emigration (Fig. 1). Emigration to Italy, for example, is carried out more from the counties of Bacău, Botosani, and Vranca, as well as from Moldova, from the rural areas of the counties of Vaslui, Niamc, and Galați.

Each of the six poles of migratory attraction in Europe affects emigration from certain regions of the country (Fig. 1).

Why pursue emigration at the beginning, across the poles of gravity from the destination?

Because the country is far from a “container” from which trips abroad are made indiscriminately. And we will give here only two examples regarding the motivation of departures and the selectivity of emigration through the poles of the hexagon mentioned above.

For this purpose, we will move from OECD data at the national level to the National Institute for Statistics (INS) data collected during the last population census carried out in 2022, but with reference to the situation in December 2021. Currently, only data is published at the national and regional levels, not at the local level, only for short-term migration abroad, not long-term, over a year.

Let’s consider, first of all, the motivation for a short-term departure from the country. Respondents who had been abroad for less than a year could choose between six categories of reasons: work, job search, study, business, family and others. Here we no longer provide detailed figures by directions and categories of causes.

We comment only on significant figures. Nationally, of the total number of people who traveled abroad for a short period of time (458,000), the majority (54%), according to the INS, said they traveled for work. The highest percentages of those who accepted this motivation in the category of the six countries of maximum attractiveness from the hexagon we discussed earlier are among Romanians from Germany (61%) and from Austria (60%).

For Romanians who left for Italy, Spain or France, the corresponding percentages are only about 50%. The second reason for emigration was the search for a job (21% of the total number of motivations). For this type of motivation, the differences depending on the chosen destination country are smaller. For the southern countries, Italy and Spain, the share of those who said they left Romania in search of work is 24% for Spain and 23% for Italy. The percentage of those who declared the same motivation from the total number of those who were in Germany was 20%, the corresponding percentage for departures to Austria was 16%.

These quantitative details are sufficient to hypothesize that departures to Germany and Austria are more for already found, secure jobs, and for insecure jobs to be determined at the destination, in the case of emigrants heading to southern Europe, to Italy or Spain. Differentiation may also stem from the fact that German-Austrian labor markets tend to have a larger, better-structured supply than southern European markets.

A second example that may be useful for discussion is related to the comparison between short-term emigration of Romanians to Germany and Italy, also using data from the 2021 census. in rural areas, it tends to be higher in settlements with lower levels of development and higher numbers of people who have previously moved abroad, recorded at the 2011 census level.

This is the push away from poverty at the start combined with the opportunities at the destination provided by people who left the same place (community or region) earlier. This regularity, recorded for all 83 territorial units defined by the district-housing environment, however, has constant variations depending on the destination of migration. For emigration to Italy, the determinants of poverty and previous departures abroad tend to be stronger when the destination country is Italy than when short-term emigration is to Germany (Sandu 2023).

The same multiple regression model was applied to both trips to Germany and Italy. A number of predictors also included regional variables related to the county’s affiliation to the historical regions of Moldova, Oltenia, or Transylvania (in a broad sense, including, outside of Transylvania proper, Banatul and Crisana-Maramures). Under these conditions, referring to multiple determinants of emigration at the county-of-residence level, Transylvania emerges as a factor with a positive and significant effect on emigration to Germany, but with a negative effect on emigration to Italy (Sandu 2023).

CONCLUSIONS

More than three quarters of Romanians abroad are in six European countries, namely Italy, Germany, Spain, Great Britain, France and Austria. Currently, these are the main poles of attraction for Romanian migration abroad. Periodically, their attractiveness changes. Germany, for example, for several years became the second pole of attraction for Romanians abroad instead of Spain. It seems that a reorientation of Romanian migration from the south to the northwest of the European continent is being structured.

A better understanding of Romanian emigration, long-term or short-term, to the six poles of the mentioned hexagon can significantly contribute to the knowledge of the dynamics of the formation and functioning of the Romanian diaspora.

The six migration fields seem to have certain patterns of functioning. Data from the 2021 census in Romania highlighted the fact that the determinants and motivations for emigration are constantly changing from one area of ​​emigration to another.

Although all areas of emigration in Romania are influenced by a set of relatively common factors (poverty-development, experience of migration abroad, ethnic composition of the population, etc.), the intensity with which they operate varies. Highlighting these specific patterns of emigration depending on the country of destination can make a significant contribution to the orientation of research in this field, as well as to the basis and structuring of migration policy.

Consistent research is needed, at least in the countries of the hexagon mentioned above, especially on long-term migration. This topic was completely ignored in the 2021 Romanian census. Based on such surveys, if carried out, it will be possible to structure relevant migration and development strategies and policies for Romania.

The entrepreneurial activity of migrants who left or returned to the country has already been covered in previous analyzes (Croitoru 2020). It would be useful to know more about this phenomenon also at the local level, with data from the 2021 census in Romania.

What are the connections between emigrants from Romania and those who stayed at home in terms of remittances, electoral behavior, children who stayed at home, individual modernity or intentions to leave? Under what conditions will emigrants from different destinations, with different professions or family situations return home? Such aspects would be extremely useful for public policy in the country if analyzed on the basis of recent data.

link

Kreitoru, A. (2020). Great Expectations: A Regional Study of Entrepreneurship Among Returning Romanian Migrants. Sage Open, 10(2), 2158244020921149.

Massey, D.S., Arango, J., Hugo, G., Quaussi, A., & Pellegrino, A. (1999). Worlds in Motion: Understanding International Migration at the End of the Millennium: Understanding International Migration at the End of the Millennium. Clarendon Press.

Sandu, D. (2023). Where and why did Romanians emigrate recently? , in Punctual Critic Magazine, no. 3-4/2023 (pending publication).

Wimmer, A., and Glick, Schiller, N. (2002). Methodological Nationalism and Beyond: Nation-State Building, Migration, and the Social Sciences. Global Networks, 2(4), 301-334.