Currently, the preferred destinations for the Romanian migrant workers are Italy and Spain. The challenging aspect of labor migration to these areas is the profile of the Romanian worker.
Age and Gender Profile of Romanian Immigrant Workers
There has been an important variation in terms of the categories of population that chose to work abroad since 1990. The percentage of young people proved to be higher during the first stages, so as the number of men over women. Most people left from the rural areas for the age category 18-59, young women from the countryside more than the ones in the cities prefer to work outside the country. Although during the first stage the percent of men working abroad was extremely high, the period 2002-2009 is characterized by a balanced gender proportion.
Motivation for Choosing the Italian/Spanish Labour Market
There are several motivations for the ones who choose the Spanish or Italian labor market over the Romanian one. The main reason why people go to work abroad is represented by the income they obtain there. Someone who gains €250 working in constructions in Romania is paid with over €1,000-€1,500 in Italy or Spain in the same sector.
Most of those who work abroad want to improve their status, to earn enough money in order to have a better life and to provide for their families, to buy a house, to go to school or to help their children go to school. It involves a need for esteem, one that lacks in a poor village or when one earns €100-200 per month.
Wages and Spanish and Italian work and stay regulations are two important reasons why these two countries have become the most popular destinations for Romanian labor migration. Even if wages are inferior to those in Germany, workers consider that the lower level of income in Spain and Italy is compensated by the more tolerant policies in terms of stay and work.
Poor Romanian Rural Areas: A Source of Low-Skilled Labor
Most of the people who work in Italy and Spain are low or medium skilled people. One possible explanation is the high percentage of people coming from the poor rural regions of Romania, where they have no conditions for education and schooling. Almost 47% of the people in Romania live in rural areas, where employment is almost non-existing. Their only alternative is to find a job abroad. In Romania their future would equate either unemployment or a minimum wage. Consequently, labor migration becomes a way of escaping poverty.
According to a report elaborated by the National Statistics Institute and the University of Bucharest in 2005, 9 out of 10 people in the rural areas live in households without access to the water system. Just 1 out of 10 persons in the urban area faces this problem. The same report shows that the degree of alimentary consumption is higher in the rural regions, which means that these people have very few resources to allocate for other needs. The statistics show that the usual spending for alimentary needs was 60% in rural areas, while in the urban ones was 45%. In 2002, the poverty rate (estimated according to incomes) was 10.2% for cities and 45.3% for the countryside, meaning that there are 4 times more poor people in the Romanian rural areas than in cities. Currently, the region of Moldavia, which is the poorest and the most rural region in the country provides the largest flow of international labor migration from Romania to Italy and Spain.
References
Florentina Constantin. Migrating or Commuting? The Case of Romanian Workers in Italy: Niches for Labor Commuting to the EU.
Ana Bleahu. Romanian Migration to Spain: Motivation, Networks and Strategies. Institute for Quality of Life, Romanian Academy, Bucharest, 2004
