Romanian migrants between origin and destination: attachment to Romania and views on return

Abstract

Romanian migration has a temporary and circulatory character: on the one hand, people are moving back and forth to and from a destination and, on the other hand, there are migrants who either resettle in Romania, come back in the home country and then emigrate to a different destination than the initial one or move to a new destination after spending time abroad without returning to Romania. The third chapter is concerned with the factors that shape these distinct possible strategies and types of mobility, with a special interest towards intentions and plans for return. In doing so, we look at the bonds Romanian migrants maintain with their home country and explore the different typologies and categories of migrants as moulded by their experiences, opinions and attitudes towards the country of origin. The main questions of interest concern how the experience of migration shapes the attitude towards the home country and the intention to return, how did the crisis influence such aspects (if it did) and what the main factors that appear as significant to one category of migrants or another from this point of view are. For this purpose, we use fifty one of the sixty one in-depth interviews realized with Romanians as part of the EUCROSS project in Denmark, UK, Spain, Italy and Germany (EUMEAN dataset).