Eluding Exit and Entry Controls: Romanian and Moldovan Immigrants in the European Union

See the reports of opinion surveys conducted immediately after the referenda: Flash EuroBarometer 171, “The European Constitution: Post-Referendum France,” EOS Gallup Europe, June 2005; and Flash EuroBarometer 172, “The European Constitution: Post-Referendum Netherlands,” EOS Gallup Europe, June 2005. See also the coverage from BBC News, “EU Constitution: Where Member States Stand,” 24 November 2005, http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/3954327.stm (accessed 12 February 2006); and Bernard Cassen , “EU: Democracy Begins at Home,” Le Monde diplomatique, English ed., July 2005, http://mondediplo.com/2005/07/04europe (accessed 12 February 2006).

European Commissioner Responsible for Enlargement Olli Rehn , “EU Enlargement under Stress: The Policy of Consolidation, Conditionality and Communication” (speech given at the Institute for European Policy, Berlin, 12 July 2005).

Ibid.

Ibid.

See an economic analysis of these concerns in Tito Boeri and Herbert Brücker, “Eastern Enlargement and EU Labour Markets: Perceptions, Challenges and Opportunities,” World Economics 2, no. 1 (2001): 49-68.

See for example Nicola Scuteri , “The Dublin Convention and Its Effects on Asylum Seekers in Europe,” Migration 36-38, special issue on refugees and refugee policy (2002); or the Irish Refugee Council, “ Fact Sheet on the Dublin Convention,” http://www.irishrefugeecouncil.ie/factsheets/dublinconvention4.html (accessed 20 November 2007 ).

See European Union , “A Comprehensive European Migration Policy,” Memo/07/188, 14 May ( Brussels: European Union, 2007).

Council Directive 2004/83/EC of 29 April 2004, on minimum standards for the qualification and status of third-country nationals or stateless persons as refugees or as persons who otherwise need international protection and the content of the protection granted. See European Council for Refugees and Exiles , “Broken Promises—Forgotten Principles: An ECRE Evaluation of the Development of EU Minimum Standards of Refugees Protection. Tampere 1999—Brussels 2004,” June (Brussels: ECRE, 2004 ).

Gary Freeman , “ The Decline of Sovereignty? Politics and Immigration Restriction in Liberal States,” in Challenge to the Nation-States: Immigration in Western Europe and the United States, ed. Christian Joppke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 86.

Christian Joppke , “Why Liberal States Accept Unwanted Immigration,” World Politics 50 (January 1998): 266-93; and Christian Joppke , “Exclusion in the Liberal State: The Case of Immigration and Citizenship Policy,” European Journal of Social Theory 8 (February 2005): 43-61.

Nina Glick Schiller , Linda Basch , and Cristina Szanton Blanc , “From Immigrant to Transmigrant: Theorizing Transnational Migration,” Anthropological Quarterly 68 (January 1995): 48-63; Nina Glick Schiller , Linda Basch , and Cristina Szanton Blanc , Nations Unbound: Transnational Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments and Deterritorialized Nation-States ( Luxembourg: Gordon and Breach, 1994 ); Alejandro Portes , Luis Guarnizo , and Patricia Landolt , “The Study of Transnationalism: Pitfalls and Promise of an Emergent Research Field,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 22, no. 2 (March 1999): 217-37; Yasemin Soysal , Limits of Citizenship (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1994); and David Jacobson , Rights across Borders: Immigration and the Decline of Citizenship (Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000).

The “gap hypothesis” was formulated in Wayne Cornelius , Philip Martin , and James Hollifield , eds., Controlling Immigration (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994), 3.

Saskia Sassen , Losing Control (New York : Columbia University Press, 1996 ).

Gary Freeman , “Modes of Immigration Politics in Liberal Democratic States,” International Migration Review 29 (Winter 1995): 881-902; and Christian Joppke, “Why Liberal States Accept.”

Randall Hansen , “Globalization, Embedded Realism, and Path Dependence: The Other Immigrants to Europe,” Comparative Political Studies 35 (April 2002 ): 259-83; and Randall Hansen and Jobst Koehler , “ Issue Definition, Political Discourse and the Politics of Nationality Reform in France and Germany,” European Journal of Political Research 44 (August 2005): 623-44.

European Commission , Standard Eurobarometer 63.4—TNS Opinion and Social, National Report: Romania (Spring 2005): 24. In response to “What does the European Union mean to you personally?” the top four choices were as follows: for 58%, freedom to travel, study, and work anywhere in the EU; for 53%, economic prosperity; for 49%, peace; and for 48%, democracy.

“EU Wants to Attract Highly-Skilled Migrants,” Deutsche Welle—World, 23 December 2005, http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,1831498,00.html (accessed 15 February 2006); “EU Says Eastern Workers Are Good,” BBC News, 8 February 2006 , http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/europe/4691650.stm (accessed 15 February 2006); and Simon Rabinovitch , “ Migrants Boost British Economy but Worry Voters,” Reuters , 25 April 2007, http://uk.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUKL1354298420070424?sp=true (accessed 27 October 2007).

Sweden, however, introduced restrictive conditions to likely labour migrants from Central and Eastern Europe, such as the requirement to have a full-time job with a fair salary, and a place to live, to stay in Sweden.

UK Home Office , Department for Work and Pensions, HM Revenue & Customs and Communities and Local Government, Accession Monitoring Report. May 2004— December 2006, 27 February (London : UK Home Office, 2007).

Anthony Browne , “Polish Plumbers Split EU as Trickle Turns into Flood,” (London) Times, 17 January 2006.

Austrian Commissioner for External Affairs Benita Ferrero-Waldner, whose country held at the time the EU's rotating presidency, led the camp backing controls against the purported flood of cheap labour from Eastern Europe, while Spidla and Polish Regional Policy Commissioner Danuta Huebner advocated opening the borders.

Luminiţa Chivu , “Department for Labour Abroad Established ,” European Industrial Relations Observatory, 8 October 2004, http://www.eiro.eurofound.eu.int/2004/10/inbrief/ro0410102n.html (accessed 15 February 2006).

IOM European Commission Project, Romania, More “Out” than “In” at the Crossroads between Europe and the Balkans, vol. 4 of IOM European Commission Project, Sharing Experience: Migration Trends in Selected Applicant Countries and Lessons Learned from the “New Countries of Immigration” in the EU and Austria (Brussels: IOM European Commission Project, 2003).

Cited by Chivu , “ Department for Labour Abroad Established.” According to Migration News, about 300,000 Romanians arrived in Spain in 2004; see Migration News 12 (July 2005): http://migration.ucdavis.edu/MN/more_entireissue.php?idate=2005_07&number=3 (accessed 20 November 2007).

IOM European Commission Project , Sharing Experience, 5, 11.

Ştefan Rădeanu , “Orăşean, sătean . . . emigrant comunitar. Forţa de muncă, o marfă care aduce României două miliarde de euro anual,” Curierul naţional, 19 January 2004.

“Raportul BNR a concluzionat: Muncitorii români au trimis în ţară peste 4 miliarde euro,” Cronica Română, 24 February 2006, http://www.cronicaromana.ro/raportul-bnr-a-concluzionatmuncitorii-romani-au-trimis-in-tara-peste-4-miliarde-euro.html (accessed 3 March 2006); and Oana Munteanu , “Un român din opt a plecat la muncăafară,” Cotidianul, 27 March 2007, http://www.cotidianul.ro/index.php?id=9953&art=26491&cHash=6d59fc86cf (accessed 28 October 2007)

See Migration News.

According to the National Bank of Moldova.

World Bank , Global Economic Prospects: Economic Implications of Remittances and Migration ( Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2006 ), 91.

Ibid, 90.

Interview with a woman, twenty-four, who has been a labour migrant for four years, in Italy. She worked as a seasonal illegal worker for two years and afterwards obtained legal status. She has been working legally in Italy for the past two years, approximately nine months a year.

The office is run by a Romanian transportation firm, Atlassib. This firm also provides parcel transport, post, and money transfer services.

Florin Cepraga , “Harta muncii românilor în UE după integrare,” Cotidianul, 16 March 2006 .

See Anna Turman , A New European Agenda for Labour Mobility, CEPS-ECHR Task Force report (Brussels: CEPS, 2004 ), for an overview of recent labour mobility policies in the EU countries.

European Commission , Communication on a Community Immigration Policy, COM(2000) 757 final, 22 November ( Brussels: European Commission, 2000 ), 13.

European Commission , Communication on Immigration, Integration and Employment, COM(2003) 337 final, 3 June ( Brussels: European Commission, 2003 ), 15.

This is similar to immigration programs developed by countries like Canada or Australia.

European Commission , Policy Plan on Legal Migration, COM(2005) 669 final, 21 December (Brussels: European Commission, 2005), 5-8.

Christian Joppke , “ Immigration Challenges the Nation-State,” in Joppke , Challenge to the Nation-State, 21.

Rogers Brubaker gave this name to the type of migration that, even if it is largely economically motivated, depends on preferential immigration rights in an external homeland. See Rogers Brubaker , “Citizenship Struggles in Soviet Successor States” International Migration Review, 26 (Summer 1992 ): 269-291.

Irina Culic , “ Dilemmas of Belonging: Hungarians from Romania,” Nationalities Papers 34 (May 2006): 175-200.

In the German statistics, these figures are higher, and the differences between the two sets of figures vary from 10.25% in 1978 to 60.2% in 1989. The discrepancy can be accounted for by the fact that many Romanian citizens left the country illegally. Figures computed after data offered in Rudolf Poledna, Sit ut sunt. Aut non sunt? Transformări sociale la saşii ardeleni după 1945 (Cluj-Napoca, Romania: Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2001), 227.

The German official figures recorded 111,180 German immigrants from Romania.

Brubaker , Citizenship and Nationhood; Christian Joppke, Immigration and the Nation-State: The United States, Germany, and Great Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); Riva Kastoryano , Negotiating Identities: States and Immigrants in France and Germany ( Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press, 2002); and Brett Kloop , German Multiculturalism: Immigrant Integration and the Transformation of Citizenship (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002).

See Hansen and Koehler , “Issue Definition ,” 635-41.

Government of Germany, Act to Control and Restrict Immigration and to Regulate the Residence and Integration of EU Citizens and Foreigners (Immigration Act) of 30 July 2004,” http://www.legislationonline.org/legislation.php?tid=129&lid=1871&less=false (accessed 20 November 2007).

Freeman , “Modes of Immigration,” 895.

Joaquín Arango and Maia Jachimowicz , “Regularizing Immigrants in Spain: A New Approach,” Migration Policy Institute, 1 September 2005, http://www.migrationinformation.org/Feature/display.cfm?ID=331 (accessed 15 March 2006).

Ibid.

Eugen Tomiuc , “Moldova: Mass Migration Threatens Country's Future,” Radio Free Europe, 29 October, 2004.

European Commission , Policy Plan on Legal Migration, 28.

Based on Government of Spain, Royal Decree 2393/2004 (30 December 2004); and Government of Spain, Ordinance 140/2005 (2 February 2005).

For an early evaluation of the 2005 regularisation (“normalisation”) program in Spain, see Arango and Jachimowicz, “Regularizing Immigrants.”

Government of Spain, Royal Decree 2393/2004.

Government of Italy, “Bossi-Fini” Law, no. 189, 30 July 2002, amendment to legislation on immigration and asylum.

Decree of the President of the Council of Ministers, 15 February 2006, in Official Gazette 55 (7 March 2006).

“Proiect de lege aprobat. Acord româno-italian pentru lucrătorii migranţi,” România Liberă , 13 January 2006.

Sebastian Lăzăroiu and Monica Alexandru , Controlling Exits to Gain Accession: Romanian Migration Policy in the Making, November (Rome : CeSPI, 2005), 12.

Arango and Jachimowicz , “Regularizing Immigrants.”

Government of Italy, Law 189/2002 on immigration, Article 18.

Government of Romania, Urgent Ordinance 144/2001, on the conditions to be met by Romanian citizens when exiting the country; required to enter EU member states and other states.

In effect, the check carried out at Schengen countries' consulates to issue a visa, or at the arrival of their borders, is now performed by Romanian Border Police officers at exit. This is a form of “externalising” controls from destination countries' national borders to the sending countries' border posts.

Similar figures were registered for 2004. See various reports in the Romanian press (Adevărul, 7 March 2005; and Jurnalul naţional, 15 June 2004).

Government of Romania, Ordinance 28/2005, to modify and complete several normative acts. A record number of passports were confiscated in the first days of application of the ordinance, which had not been properly publicized. The ordinance was issued in August, when Romanian labourers usually come home for holidays, and was intended to attest to Romania's active approach to preventing illegal migration. Protests and criticism in the public space pressured the authorities to treat the situation case by case, and to allow individuals to present documents justifying the visa overstay. The ordinance was reversed in January 2006, and the confiscated passports were returned to their owners.

Government of Romania, Law 248/2005, regarding the free travel of Romanians abroad.

Government of Romania , Ministry of Administration and Internal Affairs Ordinances 820/2005 (to establish the documents and the minimum amount of currency required from Romanian citizens to exit the country) and 900/2005 (to modify and complete Ordinance 820/2005)

Anthony Giddens , Central Problems in Social Theory: Action, Structure and Contradiction in Social Analysis (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), 5. See also Anthony Giddens , Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration ( Cambridge: Polity, 1984), 169: “Structure is always both enabling and constraining, in virtue of the inherent relation between structure and agency.”

Lăzăroiu and Alexandru , Controlling Exits, 7.

Joppke , “Why Liberal States Accept,” 283.

Karl Marx , Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 (Moscow : Progress, 1959).

Hollifield suggestively cites Max Frisch, who was speaking of the guest worker program in Switzerland, in one of his articles: “We asked for workers but human beings came.” See James F. Hollifield , “The Politics of International Migration,” in Migration Theory: Talking across Disciplines, ed. Caroline B. Brettell and James F. Hollifield (New York: Routledge, 2000), 149.

See Pierre Bourdieu , Outline of a Theory of Practice ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977); and Pierre Bourdieu , Practical Reason: On the Theory of Action (Cambridge: Polity, 1998).

An important amount of irregular migrants in the EU leave their home country as tourists, only to take employment on the black market at their destination, overstaying the legal period of the tourist visa.

Lăzăroiu and Alexandru , Controlling Exits, 9-10. With Romania's access into the EU, exit conditions were removed.

An “organized scam,” as senior Foreign Office official John Ramsden called it, according to BBC News, 30 March 2004.

Illegal ways to access the territory of EU states are devised by organized criminal networks. Women from Romania and particularly from Moldova are trafficked after having been lured with work contracts as waitresses, maids, or entertainers. Children from Romania, most of them ethnic Roma living in precarious conditions at home, are smuggled and used for begging or prostitution. These persons are not social innovators but vulnerable objects of transnational entrepreneurship in the sex and begging industries.

See accounts of the incident in the Romanian press of 14 March 2005 and the following days. Similarly, there were informal reports of illegal Romanians in Spain trying to take advantage of Spain's exceptional measure to legalize the situation of the families of irregular workers who were victims of the 11 March 2003 terrorist attack in Madrid.

The phrase is used by Ewa Morawska to describe similar strategies of immigrants from Central European countries. See Ewa Morawska , “Gappy Immigration Controls, Resourceful Migrants, and Pendel Communities,” in Controlling a New Migration World, ed. Virginie Guiraudon and Christian Joppke (London: Routledge, 2001 ), 173-99.

See the introductory chapter of Guiraudon and Joppke, Controlling a New Migration World, 1-27.

European Union , Schengen Action Plan of 2005 (Brussels: European Union, 2005).

For similar arguments for the American case, see Aristide R. Zolberg , “ Guarding the Gates,” in Understanding September 11, ed. Craig Calhoun , Paul Price , and Ashley Timmer (New York: New Press, 2002).

Lăzăroiu and Alexandru , Controlling Exits, 10.

Ibid, 9.

For a detailed discussion, see Irina Culic , “Dual Citizenship in Eastern Europe ” (paper presented at the ASN 2007 World Convention, New York, 12-14 April 2007 ).

More recently, as a reaction to media attention to increased crime and social unrest provoked by Romanian immigrants in Italy, Romania framed the problem of Roma criminals from Romania as a European issue: “This is indeed a European problem, but Romania cannot manage it alone. It needs to be tackled at the European level. The solution is that these people be treated as criminals, not as Romanian criminals” (Foreign Affairs Minister Adrian Cioroianu, quoted in Alina Anghel , “Gloanţe şi bombe pentru românii din Italia,” Adevarul, 8 October 2007).