What does home now mean for the Romanian diaspora?

More than three million Romanians left the country to work abroad between 2000 and 2015, according to a UN report from 2015. The Romanian diaspora grew by 7.3% a year during this period. After Syria, it was the second fastest annual growth rate in the world. This migration abroad is one of the most important trends shaping modern Romania, and yet little things are known about it.A scientific project of the Autonomous University of Barcelonacalled Orbits tries to fill in the the gaps by looking at the Romanian diaspora in Spain.

The St. Elizabeth Chappell stands right next to the Faculty of Sociology and the Faculty of Psychology in Bucharest. It is a bit ironical given that these are secular topics, says Gabriel Marian Hâncean, an Associate Professor at the Sociology Department of the University of Bucharest. But it’s a very old church, he adds. The Romanian is part of the Orbits team, led by the professors Miranda Jessica Lubbers and José Luis Molina of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB). Southeast Europe and Romania in particular are Molina’s main areas of interest. I contacted proffesor Hâncean after I read about Orbits, a project looking at the Romanian enclaves in Castellón de la Plana, on the eastern coast of Spain, and Roquetas de Mar, in the south of the country. Even if local politicians talk about the need for Romanians to return to their home country as Romania faces labor shortage, and almost everybody I know has friends or relatives working abroad, there is almost no serious talk about immigration in the public space. We know close to zero about the millions of people who left Romania driven by the desire to have a better life. The Orbits project is financed by the Spanish government through the Economy, Industry and Competitiveness Minister. So the Spanish government, and not the Romanian one, is paying to understand the Romanian diaspora.