Romanian immigration

Romanian immigration

1. 1 The city of Milan

Milan (part of Lombardy Region) is one of the largest cities in Italy, located in the plains of Lombardy. The municipality (Comune di Milano) has a population of 1.3 million. The Milan metropolitan area, depending on the specific definition, has a population ranging from 2.9 to 7.4 million. The municipal border covers a relatively small area because of the historical development of high density centers in agriculturally rich Lombardy.

Milan is Italy's second city; it is the wealthiest city and has inevitable attracted a large number of immigrants, mostly young.

1 .2 Romania in numbers

Romania is a country localized in the south- East Europe. Romania has a surface of 238,392 km˛. The capital is named Bucharest, a city with almost 2 million citizens. The Romanian currency is RON. The official language is Romanian and the main religion is the Orthodox Christianity. The population according to July 2008 statistics is 22,246,862 citizens. Average population density is 93/km2.

The rate of alphabetization is high, 97%. The life expectancy is 70 years.

Aspects of Romanian immigration in Italy

1.3.1 Introductive aspects

International migrations have a significant importance from the demographic point of view, especially when they contribute to the increasing or decreasing of the population of a state. The consequences of the international migrations are felt also on the social, cultural and especially economic level, both in the departure state and in the arrival state.

In the analysis of international migration, many factors are taken into consideration as reasons for the motivation of the migration of labor force and the demographic structure of the labor offer inside the developed countries. In the international migration analysis, an important factor taken into account is the labor force. The theory sustains that labor forces tend to transfer from areas with low opportunities into areas with high opportunities of jobs and the demand and offer of labor is satisfied at an international level.

Why have the immigration flows changed compared to a few decades ago, and why do many developed countries seem to attract groups of immigrants with lower skills? The classical explanation is that relative, real wages and employment opportunities are some of the main driving factors of international migration. Other more recent explanations focus on the effects of the welfare state regimes.

According to the theory, the generosity of the welfare state may play an important role in migrants' decision of choosing the country of destination, the so called "welfare magnet effect".

On the other hand, a number of non-economic factors are also highly important regarding the migration decision. Beside classic factors as "love and wars", these include luck, random events, environment, climate, language and aspects of "cultural distance". Regarding the last factor, it is a standard result that the more "foreign" or distant the new culture is and the larger the language barrier, the less likely an individual is to migrate. However, the changes and improvements in communication, continued globalization and the declining costs of transportation may imply that the effect of 'distance' has been reduced during the latest decades. Further, network effects may also counteract 'distance'. If the concerned ethnic group is already present in the destination country, this may induce further immigration from the concerned ethnic group.

After the settlement of immigrants, migration can be sometimes the occasion to rediscover the own cultural identity, to relive the traditions as a new reference point in life. In other situations it is an individual choice of a new life stile with a lot of interruptions from the past and previous cultural models of the mother country and in many cases we could speak about a "cultural contamination" of the immigrants. [22]

The classical economic theories on migration have focused on differences in income opportunities as the main determinant of international migration. According to those theories the differences in the net economic advantages are the main causes of migration. This traditional view is further reflected in the empirical literature on migration of workers as the "human capital" framework, which predicts that a person acting rationally decides to move if the future expected benefits exceed the costs of migration. For example in an immigrant couple if the wife is together with the husband but she doesn't work, the husband's income should be enough high to cover all the family expenses in order to worth the immigration process. However, in reality, the incentives to migrate, measured only by differentials in expected earnings have failed to explain why so few people move given huge differences in wages across the world.

Further, the decision to migrate has been seen as a family or household decision. A move takes place only if the net gain accumulated to some members exceeds the others' net loss.

A step further is made by the new economics of labor migration, which sees labor migration as a risk-sharing behavior in families. In contrast to individuals, households may diversify their resources, such as labor, in order to minimize risks to the family income.

Another theory is based on migration networks. Immigrants do not have full information on the alternatives of potential immigration targets and often they perform only limited search. One possible way to reach relatively good and safe decisions in the case of uncertainty and imperfect information is to decide on the basis of migration network's information. Migration networks represent " . sets of interpersonal ties that connect immigrants, former migrants, and non-migrants in origin and destination areas through ties of kinship, friendship, and shared community origin". [ ] The aspects of migration network will be discussed in the next chapters.

1.3.2 Aspects of Romanian immigration

Romanian immigrants first started to arrive in Italy in the early 1970. In the last ten years, Romanian immigration has grown to substantial levels and has become visible, due to the fact that before 1990 the Romanian Government strictly controlled the migration towards Europe.

After the fall of the communist regime the immigration from Eastern Europe and of course from Romania, has increased significantly. After 1989, the frontiers opened to all Romanians who could get a visa.

Because of the precarious socio-economic conditions present in the country, many Romanians followed the road of migration in the countries with a higher political and economic stability.

One of the countries chosen was Italy. Italy became one of the countries preferred by Romanians (some of the reasons are the language, which is easier to learn and understand and the Italian legislation, which is more tolerant concerning the immigrants compared with other European countries).

The first migrations were illegal, and in some cases tourist visas or temporary work contracts on the Italian market were used. In some other cases, the religious institutions played a significant role in migration (especially the Catholic Churches from Italy but Romania too). Soon after, new migration strategies appeared: temporary work migrations, illegal migrations, transnational migrations of qualified workers and so on. After a while, it grew in intensity and more and more Romanians migrated towards Italy.

Thus, in the last decade, an immigration flux between Romania and Italy developed. At the beginning of the 90's Romanians were a few thousand, but after 2002 their number in the entire Italy has greatly increased. The main cause of increasing number of Romanian immigrants after 2002 was the possibility of traveling without visa.

For Romania, this whole process of migration was a positive phenomenon, because it generated a strong circulation of capital between the Western Europe and Romania, which totally surprised the Romanian authorities by dimension and dynamism, reaching in 2002 about 10% of the Romanian state budget.

1.4 Demographic profile and distribution of Romanian immigrants in Milan

The migration of the Romanians to Milan is a part of a very intense migration process that developed from Romania towards the Latin countries of Europe (Italy, Spain and France) in the post-socialist period.

Milan is one of the main areas of concentration of Romanian migrants in Italy and an important place in the migration system between Romania and Italy.

According to the ISMU, Romanians are more numerous in the Province of Milan then in the city of Milan itself. Statistics of ISMU say that between the years 2006 and 2007 there was a high increase of the number of immigrants in the city of Milan, like Egyptians, Chinese, Philippines and Albanese, and Romanians, Peruvians and Ecuadorians in the Hinterland of Milan (including also Monza - Brianza).

According to ISMU, in the Province of Milan there were present on the first of July 2007, 33.840 Romanians from whom 21.630 had residence. In the City of Milan, in the same period of time, 9.880 Romanians were present, from whom 6.460 had residence. Only in the new Province Brianza- Monza on the first of July 2007, 6.550 Romanians were present and 4.200 of them had residence. Another statistic shows that without taking into account the city of Milan and the new Province of Brianza - Monza, there were 17.410 Romanians in the territory of Province of Milan, from whom only 10.970 of them had residence. Usually the statistics show that in general the number of Romanian women and men is balanced.

Table n 1 - Resident population per sex and nationality - 31 December 2005 (courtesy ISMU)

Graphic n 1 Province of Milan - Immigrants residents per sex and nationality - 31 December 2005

Table n 2 Resident population per sex and nationality - 31 December 2006 (courtesy ISMU

Graphic n 2 Province of Milan - Immigrants residents per sex and nationality - 31 December 2006

Graphic n 3 The incidence of the main nationalities in the Province of Milan (without the Monza - Brianza Province) 1 July 2007

Graphic n 4 The incidence of the main nationalities in the Province of Milan (without the Monza - Brianza Province) 1 July 2006

Graphic n 5 The incidence of the main nationalities in the city of Milan

1 July 2007

Graphic n 6 The incidence of the main nationalities in the Province of Milan (new province Monza-Brianza included )1 July 2007

Graphic n 7 - The incidence of the main nationalities in the new

Province of Monza-Brianza 1 July 2007

As it can be observed in the graphics above Romanians have a higher incidence on the province of Milan than in the city of Milan. It can be seen that in the new Province Monza -Brianza, Romanians have one of the highest incidence on the territory.

Graphic n 8 Temporary evolutions between the periods 1 July 2005- 1 July 2007 for the main foreign nationalities in the entire Province of Milan

Graphic n 9 Temporary evolutions between the periods 1 July 2005- 1 July 2007 for the main nationalities in the city of Milan

Graphic n 10 Temporary evolutions between the period 1 July 2005- 1 July 2007 for the main nationalities in the province of Milan (without city of Milan and included Monza -Brianza)

As it can be seen in the graphics above, in these three years, Romanians preferred the Province of Milan more than the city of Milan. There has been a positive evolution of the immigration process during these three years both in the city of Milan and Province of Milan.

    Romanian immigrants, as emphases the graphics above and as it can be seen in the maps below,    in general are spread all over the Milan city and Province. Predominant are the outskirts of Milan, the neighbourhoods on the Milan periphery. Romanians do not have a specific district as Chinese community but there are some areas where they can be found in a great number.

Map n 1 Romanian population density distribution in the Province of Milan

Also it is known that Romanians prefer to live in Hinterland of Milan. For example as a specific area, we can refer to the city of Cinisello Balsamo where there are Romanians "at each corner of the street" (this was my first impression when I first visit Cinisello Balsamo).

The map below shows the influence areas of Romanian immigrants and the places they use more. About those aspects will discus in the next chapters.

Map n 2 Romanian community geographically distributed in the area of the city of Milan