Full Description
In recent years, Romanians have become the second largest migrant group in Western Europe. Following the liberalization of border controls and the massive economic and political changes in Eastern Europe, human mobility has increased and is becoming a permanent feature of post-Cold War Europe. The arrival of many Eastern Europeans, with Romanians being the largest migrant group, has produced public concerns on immigration in some West European countries. This is particularly the case in Italy, where Romanian irregular migrants are often stigmatized as poor troublemakers by authorities and the mass media. This book challenges such commonly-held assumptions that artificially divide migrants into categories of wished and unwished immigrants—winners and losers of international migration.
This book compares two migrant groups. The first is composed of ethnic Germans who migrated legally from Timisoara, Romania, to Nuremberg, Germany. The second is made up of those who migrated irregularly from Borsa, Romania, to Milan, Italy. The analysis highlights a paradoxical situation. Irregular Romanian migrants in Milan had fewer rights and opportunities, yet through migration they gained prestige and came to enjoy a sense of success. Alternately, the Germans who had migrated to Nuremberg, who received more rights and opportunities, perceived that they had suffered a loss of social prestige. The focus on migrants' social status employed in the book seeks to clarify this puzzle and provide an analytical framework for researching the linkages between the migration and incorporation of Romanians—who are today European citizens—and European states' migration policies and migrant transnationalism.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Constructing Status in Transnational Migration
Nation States, Migrants' Incorporation, and Social Status
Fieldwork Encounters: Migrants and Mobilities in the Heart of Europe
Part One: Romanian Germans in Germany
Chapter 1: Germans Moving "Home:" From Timisoara to Nuremberg
Readiness to Go. German Migration during State Socialism
The Big Wave: Mass Migration of the Romanian Germans
Chapter 2: Living in Nuremberg: Accepted but Different
Getting to Nuremberg
Labor Market Incorporation
Getting Education ...and Better Jobs
Sociality Networks, Claims for Identity, and Prestige Loss
Marriage to Romanian Women and "Romanianization"
Chapter 3: A Weak Transnationality: Memory, Leisure, and Plans to Return
Remembering Places: Transnationalism as Memory
"Romania Tourists:" Transnationalism as Leisure
Transnational Pensioners
Plans to Move Back
Part Two: Romanians in Italy
Chapter 4: "We Need to Get Out Of Here": From Borsa to Milan
Migration from Borsa: Causes, Periods, and Mechanisms of Migration
The Initial Phase: Inventing Migration Strategies
The Development of Migration: Kinship Networks
Freedom of Movement in Europe
Chapter 5: Making Milan Their Own: From Precariousness to Adaptation
Getting to Milan
Finding Housing
Finding Jobs
Legalization
Freedom to Travel and Its Effects in Milan
Chapter 6: Back Home: Prestige, Gain, Remittances, and Social Change
Remittances for Sustaining Households
Transnational Strategies of Investment
Migrant Transnationalism, Social Change and Prestige Gain
Transnational Migration and Social Transformation
Conclusions
References
Index
About the Author
