Representations of Online and Offline Communication Practices of a Diasporic Community: the Case of the Romanian Diaspora
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REPRESENTATIONS OF ONLINE AND OFFLINE COMMUNICATION PRACTICES OF A DIASPORIC COMMUNITY: THE CASE OF THE ROMANIAN DIASPORA ALINA ELENA ROMASCU∗ MARIA MICLE∗∗ ABSTRACT This study was carried out in the context of the migratory phenomenon of the Romanian population, which has seen a marked increase in recent years. The theoretical anchoring of the research lies, on the one hand, in the theoretical approaches that deal with the relationships between the concept of diaspora and the diaspora as a social phenomenon and category of practices and, on the other hand, on the theoretical foundations of theories of representations. Starting with the research question, through which we intended to identify the most widespread practices of online communication of the Romanian diaspora, which contribute to the preservation of the cultural identity of the country of origin, as well as to the adaptation of the new socio-cultural environment of life, this study proposes an analysis of a set of data consisting of the responses of 899 members of the Romanian diaspora from 43 countries all over the world, collected between May and October 2019. This analysis helped to identify representations of online and offline communication practices of the Romanian diaspora. Keywords: migration, Romanian diaspora, communication practices, representations, diasporic communities. STUDY CONTEXT AND THEORETICAL PREMISES Migration is one of the processes that have deeply influenced Romanian society today; it is one of the main migrations from Eastern Europe to Western ∗ Senior Lecturer PhD. Università di Corsica Pasquale Paoli, FLLASHS. Laboratoire LISA-UMR 6240, Avenue Jean Nicoli, Campus Mariani, 20250 Corte, France. E-mail: [email protected]. ∗∗ Lecturer, PhD.m West University of Timisoara, Faculty of Political Science, Philosophy and Communication Science. 4 Blvd. V. Parvan, Timisoara 300223, Romania. E-mail: [email protected]. Rom. Jour. of Sociological Studies, New Series, No. 1, p. 31–43, Bucharest, 2021 Creative Commons License Attribution–NoDerives CC-BY-ND 4.0 32 Alina Elena Romaşcu, Maria Micle 2 Europe, a dynamic migration that requires a differentiated and complex approach (Anghel and Horváth, 2009). During the communist period, given the very strict control of the population in terms of people movement, introduced by the Ceauşescu regime, migration was limited or prevented to the maximum. Thus, in 1957, around 2,464 migrants were officially registered. By comparison, in 1990, just after the fall of the regime, around 96,929 persons emigrated; during this period, the most significant migration was ethnic migration. In the second half of the 1980s, there was a sharp increase in applications for political asylum (Anghel and Horváth, 2009). After the fall of the communist regime in December 1989, during the first years, there was, a rather temporary and exploratory migration (Diminescu, 2009) followed by economic migration (Quffa, 2015; Sandu, 2018), i.e., migrants who went to work especially in countries in the Western and Northern Europe that needed labour force. With Romania’s accession to the European Union in 2007, there was a significant migration of Romanian nationals to the European Union countries, as people could move freely without having to meet special conditions to return to the territory of the Member States of the European Union. Statistics show that this exodus of the population has accelerated sharply in recent years (ONU 2017). According to the data published by the National Statistics Institute, the Romanian migration has increased. During 2018, 239,000 more people than in 2017 left the country. This migration has intensified in recent years so that, according to the data for 2019, the number of the Romanian citizens living outside the country’ borders amounts to 9.7 million, of which 5.6 million are in the diaspora1. There are certainly many factors that have caused this migration, but among those that have had the most impact and are worthwhile to be mentioned are the unfavourable economic situation and the political and social situation that have generated a strong psychological pressure on individuals by pushing them to move to places that could allow their development (Dănăcică, 2010). In particular, one of the reasons often mentioned by Romanians as a cause for migrating is their low personal or family income. They choose to go to Western countries in order to have higher incomes and, thus, better professional recognition (Quffa, 2015). In this context, there is a brain-drain phenomenon, that is, the migration of highly skilled people: in 2005, for instance, more than a quarter of Romanian migrants were highly skilled (Prelipceanu, 2008; Nedelcu, 2010). However, given the historical context of the country, it is important to emphasize the lack of diasporic tradition during the post-communist period. This new community with no migratory past has therefore been forced to adapt and 1 Radio Europa Libera Romania: “Ministrul pentru românii de pretutindeni : 9,7 milioane de români traiesc în afara graniţelor ţării, iar 5,6 milioane sunt in diaspora”, Retrieved May 11, 2019 from https://romania.europalibera.org/a/ministrul-pentru-diaspora-9-7-milioane-de-romani-traiesc-in- afara-granitelor-tarii-iar-mai-mult-de-jumatate-sunt-in-diaspora/30073056.html. 3 Representations of Online and Offline Communication Practices of a Diasporic Community 33 invent its standards: to overcome this deficiency the Romanian diaspora has concentrated its migratory resources on the virtual space (Nedelcu, 2002). Over the years, we can see a change in the use of terms to label the Romanian migrants which are closely linked to the socio-economic and political context. Thus, for the period of 2002-2006, formulas such as Romanians living abroad, Romanians from abroad, căpşunari (English “strawberry pickers”), străineri (English “foreigners”) were employed, while the term diaspora was used more for other countries (Pricopie, 2019). Other forms such as conaţionalii noştri (English “our fellow nationals”), Romanians who have left to work, and migrants circulated in the national media (Beciu, 2012a). The term Romanian diaspora was used in a rather institutional and political context; it was introduced in 2009, at a time of cleavage, triggered by the intrusion of politics in the restructuring of the national public agenda and the activation of the national discourse on the Romanian diaspora which became a cliché of the national public agenda (Beciu, 2012a; Pricopie, 2019). While the term diaspora was initially used in relation to spatially dispersed religious groups living as a minority among other people (Dufoix, 2003), over time, the theoretical approaches dealing with this subject have undergone a restructuring under the influence of the evolution of the migratory phenomenon. Although the theories that conceptualize the diaspora are not homogeneous, “different conceptualizations and empirical fields of research have a similar starting point: the diversification of transnational mobility forms in the context of economic and cultural globalization” (Beciu, 2012b, 14). The theoretical anchoring of this research lies, on the one hand, in the theoretical approaches that deal with the relationship between the concept of diaspora and the diaspora as a social phenomenon and category of practices (Beciu, 2012b) and, on the other, on the theoretical foundations proposed by theories of representation. In this context, it is necessary first to put into perspective the research of diasporic communities, its communicational practices, as well as the interactions between actors within diasporic communities. Second, it is a question of revisiting the theories of representations proposed by Moliner (1992), Abric (1996), Roussiau and Bonardi (2001), Orgad (2012), and Beciu (2016). As such in the current study we will take into consideration the representation, on the one hand, as “a grid of reading reality” (Moliner 1992) considered as “a construction, a selective and specific description of elements of reality that generates certain meanings while excluding others” (Orgad, 2012), and on the other, as “an organized and hierarchical set of judgments, attitudes and information that a given social group develops about an object” (Abric, 1996, 11), and as “a form of social thought giving rise to particular knowledge and with the function of guiding conduct at the same time as ensuring communication between individuals” (Roussiau and Bonardi, 2001, 17). This research aims to analyse the representations of online and offline communication practices of the Romanian diaspora. Methodologically, it is based 34 Alina Elena Romaşcu, Maria Micle 4 on a survey conducted among 899 members of the Romanian diaspora from 43 countries around the world. The research goal from which we initiated the study was to identify the most used and unitary types of on- and offline communication developed by the Romanian diaspora in its areas of distribution. We were also interested in a second aspect, namely: What do these practices point to? The responses helped us to understand whether these practices support the preservation of Romanian cultural identity, on the one hand, and, on the other, if they serve the Romanians to integrate in the new communities of the host countries. METHODOLOGICAL DISCUSSION To study the online and offline communication practices of the Romanian diaspora, a quantitative methodology through a questionnaire-based survey was preferred. “The main interest of the questionnaire