Romania and the New Economy of Migration: Costs, Decision, Networks, Development

Abstract

In some earlier studies, as a response to the media debate during the hot summer of 2006, regarding Romania’s emigration as following the accession to the EU, we were saying that the fear of mass migration from Romania was not justified. Romania is not only a gateway for the East-West international migration (like Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece for the South-North direction), but a labour market in need of workers. Nowadays, almost two years after January 1st, 2007, the facts prove our prediction as being true. While a big part of the labour force is already migrated, mostly to the SE Europe (some 2.5m workers are cited to be abroad, with both legal and illegal/irregular status, even before the EU enlargement), the Romanian companies could not find local workers to use them in order to benefit from the money inflow targeting Romania in the light of its new membership to the European Union (foreign investments and European post accession funds). Instead of increasing the salaries, the local employers rather prefer to ‘import’ workers from poorer countries (Moldavians, Chinese, Ukrainians and others who still accept a lower wage as compared to the medium wage in Romania, but bigger enough as compared to those from their countries of origin).