Romania turns from a source to a destination for migrants, most of them nationals returning home

Romania is gradually changing its migration profile, as for the third consecutive year, the number of those settling in the country is higher than the number of those leaving, according to a Social Monitor infographic. However, two-thirds of those settling in the country are Romanians returning to their homeland.

Between 2022 and 2024, Romania registered almost 200,000 more inhabitants due to immigration, according to Social Monitor, a project of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, based on official data.

The latest data published by the National Institute of Statistics confirms that Romania is no longer a dominant source of emigration, but rather a destination for immigration: in 2024, for the third consecutive year, more people settled in Romania for a period longer than 12 months than those who emigrated.

The migration balance was 97,114 people in 2022, +66,065 people in 2023, and +36,200 people in 2024.

According to the same source, "it should be noted that when we talk about immigrants, we do not refer exclusively to foreign citizens."

Thus, in 2023, the most recent data published by Eurostat showed that approximately two-thirds (217,500) of the 324,000 long-term immigrants registered were Romanian citizens who had returned to their country. Of the 106,500 immigrants with foreign citizenship, the most numerous were from Nepal (18,042), Sri Lanka (14,316), Turkey (9,366), India (7,830), the Republic of Moldova (5,742), and Bangladesh (4,982).

Similarly, the data on emigrants from Romania do not only include Romanian citizens, the Social Monitor also revealed.

Thus, in 2023, 239,000 emigrants from Romania were registered. Of these, only 150,000 (63%) had Romanian citizenship. Important contingents of emigrants from Romania had Nepalese (11,417), Turkish (10,698), Sri Lankan (8,123), Moldovan (7,738), or Indian (5,474) citizenship.

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