On February 19, 2009, Soros Foundation Romania issued ‘Romanian Communities in Spain’, a sociological study developed within its "Migration and Development" program, which focuses on the factors that determine and set the trends in the return of Romanians from abroad.
The study starts with an overview of Romanian community profiles and the dynamics of Romanian immigration in Madrid region, Spain.
Four municipalities were analyzed: Alcala de Henares, Coslada, Arganda del Rey and the Torrejon de Ardoz, all within Madrid region, which encompasses the largest number of Romanian in Spain, about one quarter of all Romanian immigrants in this country. According to data offered by the National Statistics Institute of Spain in January 2008, these communities amount to 18828, 15515, 10485 and 7645 Romanians, respectively.
Immigrant communities are listed as "buffer areas" created in the process of migration and responding to the specific needs of migrants.
The analysis of the Madrilenian communities reveals that to the immigrant, they appear as a "new" world situated between home and abroad: "I think this is what we are called, that we’re no longer Romanian Romanians but we are Romanians within Spain...”.
Depending on their areas of origin in Romania, the first newcomers arrived from Transylvania and Banat and still constitute the largest numbers in Alcala de Henares and Arganda del Rey. Coslada and Toreejon de Ardoz communities are made up of immigrants coming from Wallachia in particular. Migrant networks have subsequently been extended to Moldova or other areas of the Old Kingdom.
The ways in which the migration schemes in the four communities were configured are reflective of the migrants’ various needs, ranging from the preservation of a satisfying connection with the place of origin - seen as a profitable business opportunity – to their need to secure a certain religious dimension, pragmatically understood by most immigrants.
The second half of the research groups together thematic analyses, dealing with subjective aspects migrant life as well as with external consequences of migrancy such as occupational trajectories or remittances, return migration, integration into host communities or the social capital of migrants.
Labor demands in Spain focus mainly on poorly-paid low prestige jobs in the trading and service industries, both skilled and unskilled. Though a real fact for a good part of the Romanian migrants in Spain, this “loss” of status did not necessarily translate into a loss of income, or at least it was not felt so, due to the higher average of such salaries in Spain compared with those in Romania. "
As regards housing, Spain is characterized by congestion: 79% of respondents live on properties with multiple households, 60% with 4 other people or over 4, and in 15% of the cases there were more than 2 persons in the same room. Nevertheless, housing dissatisfaction among migrants is low - only 10% of respondents said they were not satisfied with the manner in which they lived and only 25% were less content with their lodging arrangements in Spain than those they used to enjoy in Romania.
Capital accumulations within the Romanian communities considered tend to occur mainly in the country of destination and the transfer of equity to their home country is found in only few cases, since "two-thirds of migrants from the Madrid region look upon household as those family members living in Spain only.
Return migration is seen as both a long-term project and a state of mind. What draws them back is their concern for “own home” and “own business”, but the ones who actually plan on returning are those whose health deteriorated and those who foresee a positive future for the labor market in Romania.
Going back is understood as a family project: 57% of those who claim they certainly will return also indicate someone else in the family as part of the plan. This is explained by the high percentage (around 70%) of Romanians living together with at least one other family member in the Madrilenian communities.
The most likely to return are those in Arganda del Rey. “Their elder age seems to account for it: unlike the situations in Coslada, Alcala de Henares and Torrejon, in Arganda del Rey the larger share of the population are over 40.” A more reduced social interaction and a weak knowledge of Spanish deepen the difference between Arganda del Rey and the other three cities in the survey, adding new factors which favor an increased tendency to out-migrate.
“Romania’s policy in respect to migration”, the study authors say, “should rather be aimed at improving conditions than at reducing the number of temporary migrants”.
In their vision, optimizing migration can be done at institutional level, by lowering costs and by identifying greater benefits for those involved: migrants, but also host and home countries.
The population sample in the research is represented by 832 adult Romanian immigrants.
Data collection in the four Madrilenian communities was conducted in September 2008 by a team of 16 Sociology and Social Welfare students of the Bucharest University, under the supervision of four doctoral students of the same faculty: Marian Bojincă, Vlad Grigoraş, Ioana-Alexandra Mihai şi Monica Şerban.
The project was the result of a team's work coordinated by professor Dumitru Sandu; Survey's team: Marian Bojincă, Vlad GrigoraÅŸ, Ioana-Alexandra Mihai – doctoral students; Monica Åžerban and Georgiana Toth – doctoral students; Paula TufiÅŸ, Ph. D. and Mihaela Åžtefănescu - Program Coordinator, Soros Foundation.
Further information: Laura Husti-Răduleţ, Communication Manager,
lhusti-radulet@soros.ro, 0745 643 698
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