A Stage Approach to Transnational Migration Migrant Narratives from Rural Romania Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philodophy to the Department of Sociology at the University of Osnabrück By Ruxandra Oana Ciobanu From Constan ţ a Osnabrück, 2010 PhD thesis defended at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Osnabrück, under the supervision of Professor Dr. Michael Bommes, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Osnabrück and Dr. Christina Boswell, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Edinburgh 2 To my extended family 3 Acknowledgements For me sociology is a life style and the interaction with others is an everyday reality without which it is very difficult for me to exist. This has been proven in the spring of the year 2007 when I was writing up my PhD thesis and I was forced to live alone, because my flatmates left for their fieldworks. The advantage was that I was fully immersed in the writing, whereas when they returned I was more immersed in our conversations. I thank them for encouraging and distracting me when necessary. I think I am a very lucky person because I have had the honour to meet wonderful people. Many of them influenced me and my work more or less intentionally. I thank very much all those who discussed with me, smiled to me and encouraged me in my work. Migration is not only a subject of study for me. It overlaps with my biography – given that I experienced internal migration for studies by moving to Bucharest, and later on lived in Budapest, Hamburg, Edinburgh, Geneva and Lisbon. The present thesis is an outcome of my constant interest in migration research beginning with the second year of university (2001). Since then I participated in many research projects coordinated by Professor Dumitru Sandu who has become a mentor to me. There are not enough words to thank him. In spite of generously offering me a lot of his time, he was happy for me to conduct my PhD under the supervision of Professor Michael Bommes. I met Professor Michael Bommes while I was participating in the project “Expanding the Knowledge Base of Migration Policy Making in Eastern Europe” supported by a Marie Curie Excellence Grant. He later on became my supervisor. He inspired me a lot in my theoretical research and showed me how to make the most of my empirical data. I thank him for all the revelatory discussions that we had. During the above mentioned project I conducted the fieldwork in Romania and in Spain that I could later on use in my own PhD research. I thank the project coordinator, Dr. Christina Boswell and my colleagues Tim Elrick, Emilia Lewandowska and Drago ș Radu for the long discussions and the cycling rides we took together. My PhD research benefited also from the financial support of the University of Bucharest that offered me a scholarship. I am also very happy to have been part of two migration research groups; the Migration Research Group at the Hamburg Institute of International Economics and the Migration and Citizenship Research Group at the University of Edinburgh. Both of them constituted places for discussion where I presented my work in progress and received valuable feed-back. I am also very grateful to Professor Lynn Jamieson, Dr. Pontus Odmalm, 4 Professor Jo Shaw, Professor Liz Stanley, and Professor Lynn Staeheli from the University of Edinburgh. Another milieu that I was very lucky to be part of was the IMISCOE network – International Migration, Integration and Social Cohesion. This network facilitated my participation in conferences and workshops where I presented different bits and pieces of my PhD research. Special thanks to Dr. Pascal Goeke who made accessible for me some important texts of the German sociology. The last hundred meters of my PhD benefited from the financial support and scientific input from the TOM network –Transnationality of Migrants. Special thanks also to Catherine Grosvenor who did miracles with the language of my PhD thesis. I would like to thank Professor Margarida Marques for her thorough comments and support in the final changes of the thesis. The inhabitants from the two villages 1 – Luncavi ţ a and Feldru – were very open to me, and helped me greatly in my stay there, as well as in Spain. They were the ones that made possible my research. In the following pages I will say their story the way I understood it. My eternal gratitude goes to my mother Maria who has been next to me day and night encouraging me in the hardest and most irrational moments and to Vitaliano for his patience and understanding of my territorial mobility. In the loneliest moments and when I felt very remote from the world, my friends have been there listening to my whining. I thank you for understanding and accepting what I do and not look at me in a strange manner and pose the unposable question ‘And … when will you get a normal job?’ In the name of all the ‘oppressed’ PhD students I want to stand up and say ‘This is as normal as I can get!’ Working for my PhD has been a great adventure and has enriched me both intellectually and humanly. I have never felt that my work was a burden, all I felt is that I am alive and I am lucky to do what I am doing. 1 The names of the respondents to the interviews are fictional in order to assure the anonymity of the migrants. 5 6 Table of Contents CHAPTER I: Introduction _____________________________________________________ 11 CHAPTER II: Revisiting theories of international migration _________________________ 19 II.1 Concepts and theories___________________________________________________ 20 II.1.1 Circular / temporary migration _________________________________________ 20 II.1.2 Transnationalism ____________________________________________________ 21 II.1.3 Social connections ___________________________________________________ 27 II.2 A stage-approach to migration ___________________________________________ 34 II.3 Systems theory in migration research______________________________________ 36 CHAPTER III: Research Methodology ___________________________________________ 40 III.1 Methodologies in migration research _____________________________________ 40 III.2 Narratives / Biographical interviews / Life stories ___________________________ 43 III.3 Selection of the Sites ___________________________________________________ 44 CHAPTER IV: Migration Narratives: The Analysis of the Migration from Luncavi ţ a and Feldru to Spain ______________________________________________________________ 51 IV.1 Context in the origin community _________________________________________ 52 IV.1.1 Location factors _____________________________________________________ 53 IV.1.2 Socio-economic milieu ________________________________________________ 54 IV.1.3 Cultural context _____________________________________________________ 58 IV.2 Family narratives: the Romanian migratory landscape as seen through family stories____________________________________________________________________ 63 IV.2.1 The Banu family _____________________________________________________ 65 IV.2.2 The Pop family ______________________________________________________ 71 IV.2.3 Comparison of the two family structures __________________________________ 77 IV.3 Migrants’ stories ______________________________________________________ 81 IV.3.1 Cornel and Luiza ____________________________________________________ 81 IV.3.2 Sebastian _________________________________________________________ 101 IV.3.3 Mioara ___________________________________________________________ 115 CHAPTER V: Community narratives of Luncavi ţ a and Feldru: migration patterns, economic integration and life in Spain __________________________________________ 122 IV.4.1 Luncavi ţ a _________________________________________________________ 122 IV.4.2 Feldru ___________________________________________________________ 131 V.1 Stages in the migration from Luncavi ţ a and Feldru _________________________ 135 7 CHAPTER VI: Migration Policy Making in the Country of Origin____________________ 139 VI.1. Migration Theories and Migration Policies _______________________________ 142 VI.2 The country of origin__________________________________________________ 143 VI.2.1 Remittances and investment __________________________________________ 146 VI.3 Romanian migration policies ___________________________________________ 152 VI.4 Grounded policy making_______________________________________________ 155 VI.4.1 Community level ___________________________________________________ 155 VI.4.2 National level ______________________________________________________ 156 VI.5 Systems theory approach to migration policy making_______________________ 158 CHAPTER VII: Conclusions: The meta-narrative of Romanian migration _____________ 162 VII.1 Methodological conclusions____________________________________________ 164 VII.2 Migration projects ___________________________________________________ 167 VII.2.1 Disparate social connections _________________________________________ 168 VII.2.2 Family migration __________________________________________________ 168 VII.2.3 Community networks _______________________________________________ 170 VII.3 Patterns of migration _________________________________________________ 170 VII.3.1 1990-1995 _______________________________________________________ 172 VII.3.2 1996-2001 _______________________________________________________ 176 VII.3.3 2002-2006 _______________________________________________________ 178 VII.3.4 Post-2007 ________________________________________________________ 181 VII.4 Romanian