Short survey of Romanian emigration

1,190,000 Romanian citizens officially live in Italy. There are 73 UN member states that have a population below this figure. The number increases from year to year by at least 100,000 (about 50 UN countries have populations below this quota).

Romanians are the most important foreign community in Italy, representing a quarter of the total migration from the Peninsula. They are followed by Albanians, Moroccans, Chinese and Ukrainians. On the scale of Italy, Romanians represent less than 2% of the population, but they are the main ethnic minority. There are 180 schools teaching in Romanian and 160,000 Romanian children in kindergartens or primary schools. There are 250 Romanian Orthodox churches and almost 200 other denominations (Roman Catholic, Greek Catholic, Adventist, Baptist, Pentecostal). There are almost 1,000 restaurants, grocery stores with a Romanian specialty, grocers, bakeries, patisseries and confectioneries. There are about 100 Romanian cultural and humanitarian associations (according to the Romanian Embassy in Rome). Most Romanians live in Lazio, Lombardy, Piedmont and Veneto,
Italy itself experienced a phenomenon similar to the Romanian migration, 100 years ago, when 750,000 Italians left the Peninsula annually. Today, the most important communities of Italian ancestry are in Brazil (25 million), Argentina (20 million), the USA (18 million), France (5 million), etc., constituting a population that exceeds that of current of Italy.
Spain is the second destination for Romanians, with approximately 600,000 officially settled people. Romanians and Moroccans are the main ethnic minorities in the Spanish peninsula, where minorities barely exceed 10% of the population. In 2010, the Romanian population was even larger, about 900,000 people, but, in the midst of the economic crisis, the Spanish government took several measures to discourage migration from Romania and cause unemployment to decrease. There are 375 schools with groups in the Romanian language (the most numerous in the Madrid area, the fewest in the Balearic Islands), 115 Romanian associations and several hundred Orthodox, Greek-Catholic, Catholic, Adventist churches. The number of Romanian shops and restaurants is several hundred, with a high density in the Madrid-Getafe area and on the Costa Blanca.
In Germany, with a presence of around 600,000, Romanians are the eighth ethnic minority (fourth if we exclude historical minorities). Compared to other Western European countries, Germany has a higher share of ethnic diversity, with only 80% being German (compared to 90% in Italy and Spain – the share of the majority population). The main minority is Turkish, established in the 1960-70s, when Federal Germany went through a labor crisis. Today Turks make up 3.7% of the population and have had important influences on social life in Germany, especially through Levantine cuisine and more recently through generations of artists with remarkable successes in music and cinema. Among the historical minorities, the Polish and the Russian stand out, and among the recently established ethnic groups, the most important are the Syrian, the Romanian and the Italian.
Romanians have become the fourth ethnic group in Ireland as well, where 95% of the population is represented by “white Irish” and the historical immigration is represented by the British. In 2018, the second ethnic group in Ireland was represented by the Poles, the British occupied the second position, Lithuanians, Romanians and Latvians completed the ranking. It should be noted that Ireland has a total population of 4.7 million inhabitants and one of the highest fertility rates in the European Union, but nevertheless supports a net positive migration rate of about 1 per thousand inhabitants annually.
In Hungary, Romanians represent the fifth ethnic group (if we consider historical groups) and the first ethnic group (if we consider recent migration). Thus, according to Eurostat, among the residents in Hungary, 207,000 people were born in Romania, representing almost 40% of recent immigration. A large number of them are represented by ethnic Hungarians from Romania, but even excluding them, Romanians remain the most important ethnic group. Hungarians represent 84% of the country’s population, and the main historical minorities are the Roma and the German. Also, there were historical Romanian and Slovak communities in Hungary, on the border with the two neighboring countries, and their number increased after the EU integration of all the countries in the area.
In Austria there are 113,000 residents born in Romania, constituting the fourth ethnic group in relation to recent migration. According to Index Mundi, 91% of the population is represented by Austrians, and the main historical minorities are those from the former Yugoslavia (4%). Recent migration consists of German, Serbian, Turkish, Romanian and Bosnian citizens.
Somewhat surprisingly, Romanians also have a significant share in Slovakia, where they are the third recently established ethnic group, after Czechs and Hungarians, but more numerous than Poles and Germans. Slovakia is, like Romania, one of the countries with the lowest immigration rates, and the Romanians in Slovakia do not exceed 10,000. In terms of historical minorities, Slovaks make up only 80% of the population, the other ethnicities being Hungarian, Roma and Ukrainian.
Another surprising presence in the Eurostat rankings is that of Romanians in Denmark. In recent migration, the population originating from Romania ranks 4th, after Poles, Syrians and Turks, but in front of ethnic Germans. The Danes represent 86% of the country’s population, and the most important minorities in the 20th century were the Albanians and Arabs (Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan), accepted as part of labor recruitment procedures, but also following humanitarian actions. Likewise, Romanians represent an important weight in the percentages that describe migration to Iceland. The island has historic ethnic groups from Denmark, Sweden and other northern European countries, and recently the Poles were the most dynamic ethnic group. The Romanians settled in Iceland exceed a little over a thousand people, but they have a weight to be taken into account in the case of the state with only 338,000 inhabitants. Iceland has doubled its population in the last 50 years, a major source being immigration.
In Portugal, the majority ethnic group represented 95% of the population until recently. The rest, a large part, was made up of people originally from old Portuguese colonies, predominantly Cape Verde (on the coast of Africa) and Brazil. After the integration into the European Union, Portugal launched an ethnic diversification program whose main beneficiaries are Ukrainians and Romanians. Slightly exceeding the number of 30,000, Romanians in Portugal benefit from better developed Romanian language education programs than in other countries where they have a much larger presence.
Outside the European Union, if Brexit becomes effective, the largest Romanian communities are those in Great Britain. With a total of 411,000 Romanian residents, according to the British statistics office, the Romanian community across the Channel became relevant after 2011, when it recorded annual growth rates of over 25%. Native Britons account for 80% of the total population, and the ethnic landscape in the United Kingdom is one characterized by great diversity: 7.5% of residents are of Asian origin, and 3.3% are of African origin.

Text and image: Nicu Ilie

See the full article in Cultura magazine. Translated with the accord of the author. Rights reserved. Copyright: revistacultura.ro