International circulatory migration as a local developing factor: The Romanian example Ana Maria Oteanu National School for Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, ami.oteanu@gmail.com ABSTRACT Border-crossing offers numerous possibilities for hard-pressed populations to earn money through both legal and illegal means. The paper tries to assess the socio-economic changes brought by international labour migration at personal, family and sending community levels and identify the main economic strategies which have implemented an extended-family between the sending and the receiving communities. The research findings will suggest how the practices of remittances investment in the sending region affect the degree of organization of the migration networks, the success of adaptation in the receiving countries (at the network level), the norms, gender roles and structure of migrants' families, as well as the (re)construction of borders, identities and life-styles. KEYWORDS: financial remittances, entrepreneurship, extended family, international labour migration, migration borders, east post-communist transition, migration flows Introduction The presented paper aim to conduce to a qualitative understanding of patterns and consequences of labour migration through an anthropological fieldwork in high rating sending communities from Central and Eastern European countries like Romania, Bulgaria and Republic of Moldavia (the next phase of the project, 2008-2009 is focused on the earlier EU integrated countries: Hungary, Czech Republic and Poland). On the post communist transition background and as a result of the EU lifting visa requirement (January 2001 for Romania and Bulgaria, and before 2000 for Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary), the practice of temporary work abroad increasingly became an adaptive strategy for east citizens. Because the migration process of the East European workers is still understudied in spite of its extent and social impact, the present study focuses on the entrepreneurial behaviour at the level of migrants and potential migrants, on the existing connections between the respective investments in the context of European integration as well as on the role of the extended family in managing the financial remittances. As Grabbe suggested (2000: 519), a tension is growing between the internal and external security policies of the European Union (EU) as it extends its border regimes to the central and east European (CEE) membership applicants. Nowadays, a central aim of EU foreign policy is to stabilize the region on its eastern periphery by using the '[...] same methods applied so successfully in western Europe' (Grabbe 2000: 521) over the past half century - regional integration to reduce socio-economic disparities and knitting populations together. Both, member states and EU institutions have used their roles in the accession process to put pressure on CEE countries over issues of special concern to them such as border policies, nuclear safety, treatment of minorities (in this case Romania has the most beneficial legislation) and last, but not least the population movements. Migration flows in EU after 1989: The case of southern and Central European countries Border-crossing offers numerous possibilities for hard-pressed populations to earn money through both legal and illegal means. The main problems of the EU integration are often seen as migration and cross-border crime, although they can not be causally linked since migration does not necessarily cause cross-border crime (Grabbe 2000: 521). It is not easy to estimate the real scale of the economic potential of the east-west migration after 1990 because the main migration strategies are the ones motivated by economic opportunities, and because it includes also transit migration across CEE by the third-country nationals. Gaps between the respective income levels and living standards of the CEE countries and the EU are being reduced by economic growth, but they will be there for several decades yet (Massey et. al 1993: 439) for most of the applicant countries. Although relative income levels are converging quickly with EU levels for countries like Slovenia and the Czech Republic, the process will be much slower for the Balkan countries (International Monetary Fund 2002: 141). Nevertheless, flows of people seeking to reside long-term in the EU are small, with most migrants taking up short-term employment in Western Europe. In comparison to the older members of the EU which have been integrated into EU before the downfall of communism in Europe, Romania and Bulgaria have gone through many transitions among which three are essential for a new type of organization for the society: political transition, economic and social transition, and of course the transition towards the integration of the institutional structures of the West (EU and NATO). In Romania, the period after the 1989 December revolution brought about not only the change in the political spectrum but also in the definition of the social situation of the country. Regarding the economic development, the country registered a significant progress in the context of the reorientation of the economy from a planned state economy towards a free enterprising, viable capitalist economy. This also brought about a redirection of state funds from the large industrial companies, remains of the communist era, to more profitable economical sectors. However, even if the emergence of the small and medium enterprises (SME) began in the last decade, they managed to accumulate only a part of the employees that worked in the former large industrial companies, and this pushed the unemployment rate alarmingly high in the middle of the 1992 (Jehle, Schrieder, Munz 2000: 1223). The impossibility of reenlisting due to the absence ofjobs and also due to the big number of applications caused a massive transmigration of the labour force toward countries like Israel (in the period between 1991 and 1999 the number of workplaces allocated to Romanians were consequently reduced significantly), Italy and Spain (becoming even more popular after 1995 after the liberalization ofthe Schengen visas), and even countries such as France, Great Britain and Ireland. This is also the case in some other newly integrated countries like Bulgaria and not least Hungary and Poland, each with a significant number of immigrants on the EU labour black market. This is the reason why 'fears' of migratory flows of cheap labour from the Eastern Europe (especially from countries like Romania, Bulgaria or Republic of Moldavia) have generated political pressure from the western countries like Austria, Germany, the Nederlands or Switzerland to restrict CEE citizens' employment in the old EU countries for many years after their countries became the EU members. This turns out to be a strange paradox because many of the western countries, (especially those where the economy registered a comedown after the Euro introduction, at 1st of January 2002) would probably benefit considerably from the legal immigration of skilled workers from CEE and sectors such as construction and domestic services since they are already dependent on cheaper, East European force labour. The EU lifting visa requirement (January 2001 for Romania and Bulgaria) aggrandized the idea of 'soft and hard borders' (Grabbe 2000: 521) in the Schengen zone explaining that '[...] internal frontiers become soft, while external ones are hard, effectively creating a larger zone of free movement, but one with sharper edges that are harder to penetrate from the outside' (ibid.). This is also the case of Republic of Moldavia, which is still under the strong Ukrainian and Russian influence, where people can cross the borders with Ukraine and Russia without their documents being checked, making it an area, similar to Schengen area, although less formal. After January 2007 Moldavia faced a redirection of the migration flows from this country, not westward, to the Schengen zone, to where the access was limited, but eastward, to Russia and Ukraine. 2 = Neighbour and transit countries 3 = Receiving countries -> = flows of people and remittances Source: Van Hear (2002: 423). Fig 1: Destinations and migration flows in the CEE / SEE states In 2004, after the new EU wave of accession, Bulgaria and Romania have also introduced measures to tighten border controls and impose visa regimes on third countries - after January 2007, Romania had imposed visa also for Moldavian citizens. After they became EU members, Romania and Bulgaria accepted the EU legislation and declined the old communist legacy of keeping the foreigners out of the country, but they are still not aware about the problem of their own migratory flows. By the 1980s the Southern European countries like Italy, Spain, and Portugal - which only a decade before had been sending migrants to wealthier countries in the north - began to import workers from Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and Middle East (De Valderrama 1993: 171). Most of the world's developed countries have become diverse, multiethnic societies, and those that have not reached this state are moving decisively in that direction. At this moment, as Massey claims '[...] there is no single, coherent theory of international migration, only a fragmented set of theories that have developed largely in isolation from one another, sometimes but not always segmented by disciplinary boundaries' (Massey et. al 1993: 431). In 1993, de Valderrama wrote a research note on the case of new host countries concerning the redirection of the migratory flows. At the beginning of the 1990s, Spain (and this was also the case of Italy, Portugal or Ireland) switched place with Germany and Israel in hosting the new immigrants coming from the ex-communist countries. De Valderrama estimated (1993: 172) that after 1990, the percentage of immigrants grew for more than 400 times. Today, Spain became the second largest host in the Western Europe (after Germany), especially for immigrants from Romania, Bulgaria and Albania (International Outlook Migration 2006: 211). Over the last 15 years, the number of foreign residents in the new host countries has nearly quadrupled, but in the last five years, after the lifting of Schengen visas for Romania and Bulgaria in 2001, the growth even increased (ibid.). An important feature of this growing immigration, expressed in terms of the number of foreign residents, is their nationality. More than 50 percent come from the CEE countries, and more than a quarter of those are Romanians (ibid.) Entrepreneurial behaviour and family related migration strategies Why is this a stringent point of the study? What does it really say about the migration flows after 1990, of Romanians in particular and Eastern Europeans in general? The answer lies in the percentage offered by the International Outlook Migration Annual Review in 2006 (more than 100,000 contracts of Romanians concluded abroad in the first three months of 2004) and is a predictor of the fact that over last five years 10 percent of the Romanian households had at least one emigrant member (especially in Spain, Italy, Germany or Ireland), while the migration rate in some Romanian counties like Neamt or Vrancea is more than 30 percent (Oteanu 2005: 367). As Boyd assessed (1989: 641), socioeconomic relations both transmit and shape the effect of social and economic structures on individuals, families and households - as domestic and sustainable units. Additionally, social ties transmit information about places of destination (including places of return migration) and sources of settlement assistance. Studying migration networks - particularly those linked to family and households - thus permits '[...] understanding migration as a social product - not as the sole result of individual decisions made by individual actors', not as '[...] the sole result of economic or political parameters, but rather as an outcome of all these factors in interaction' (ibid.: 641-42). The motivation and ability to migrate as well as the pattern of migration are influenced by the resource levels of households, the age and sex structure of the family / household and the stages of the family life cycle (ibid.: 643). Beginning with understanding the patterns and networks of international migration, this study is based on a field research which took place between May 2005 and September 2006 in three rural high rating sending communities from Romania, Bulgaria and the Republic of Moldavia. The main field of the study was in Romania, in a Csango catholic commune from Neamt County, named Tamaseni,1 and the other two - only explorative and descriptive fields - were in Pelinia commune, district of Rasinari in the Republic of Moldavia and Svishtov on the Bulgarian Danube bank. The research methodology was composed of unstructured and semi-structured interviews, (non)participative observation and language proofs. Seventy four interviews were taken in Tamaseni, eight in Pelinia and five in Svishtov. The research findings suggest how the practices of remittances investment in the sending region affect the degree of organization of the migration networks, the success of adaptation in the receiving countries (at the network level), the norms, gender roles and structure of migrants' families, as well as the (re)construction of borders, identities and life-styles. Using a comparative perspective, I will try to underlie the characteristics of migration networks in those communities, beginning with the role of financial remittances in defining the entrepreneurial behaviour. Tamaseni commune is situated in the north-east part of Romania, in the county of Neamt, 54 km from Piatra Neamt, the centre of the county, and less than 6 Km from the city of Roman. The city of Roman was an important reference in the communist period because it held an industrial platform 'Laminorul Roman', where the majority of the Tamaseni villagers worked until 1990. The deindustrialization process, which was a part of the main post-communist transformations, resulted in high levels of unemployment in the village. Most of the commuters were dismissed on the basis of governmental ordinances by which they received a number of salaries as a compensation for loosing their jobs. One of the main responses to the local job market reduction and the decreasing standard of life was the strategy of migrating abroad and getting jobs there. Due to the lack of economic perspectives in the region, accompanied by the chronic crisis in the Romanian agriculture after 1989, the temporary international labour emigration became a survival strategy for the inhabitants of the commune. The migrations that started at the beginning of the 1990 have been increasing all the time. The favourite destinations of Tamaseni inhabitants are certain big cities in Italy, Ireland and Spain. There are some villagers who immigrated to Israel, France or Portugal, but their number is low compared to the ones who have migrated to the above countries. Two villages of the Tamaseni commune (Tamaseni and Adjudeni) have the highest rates of migration in the county. The village with the highest rate of immigrants (34 percent in 2005) is Adjudeni (Stan 2005: 5). After 1990 there were three such migration waves in Romania and in the Danube - north east of Bulgaria - as well. The project started in May 2005, as a OSI programme - HESP - Teaching Anthropology. Means and Meanings programme, coordinated by a sociologist Razvan Stan and continued as a MATRA (Embassy of Holand) project in July and December 2007, coordinated by SAR's specialists Razvan Stan and Ruxandra Noica. In the Republic ofMoldavia the migration flows were a bit different. At the beginning of the 1990s the main migration wave was directed through Russia, especially through Moscow and Saint Petersburg, and through Ukraine. The Transnistrian civil wars that followed redirected the flow towards Romania (this migration already existed before, but was insignificant in comparison with the waves towards Russia and Ukraine) and other European countries like Germany, Italy and Spain. The interviews revealed that also some Israel migration networks existed in the late 1990, but rather on the small scale. After 1 January 2007, the introduction of EU visas for the Moldavian citizens, had diminished and redirected the Moldavian networks towards east. The first relevant Romanian and north Bulgarian wave of migration, typical for the years 1992-1993 involved a certain degree of risk on behalf of the migrants because the specialized migrant networks were not yet well organised and because the immigrants had to carry with them large sums of money (up to 2,000 for obtaining the Schengen visa. The hosting countries of this wave were predominantly Germany, Israel, Greece (for Bulgarian migrants) and Italy (in a smaller percent). The second wave of migration, in the years 1998-1999 was mostly motivated by family completion, de-industrialization process in the sending region and also by the growing migration networks that developed by that time. The immigrants most often obtained a tourist visa and when they reached their destination they had the opportunity to obtain work permits to avoid the black-market work and to legally enter the labour market. The main hosting countries of this flow were Spain, Italy and Greece (for Bulgaria). The third wave of migration erupted after the EU lifted the visas for Romania and Bulgaria in 2001. This wave of migration involved mostly young people. In time, this wave has decreased, but nowadays almost every house has a relative working abroad and is included in the networks. This wave introduced an innovation in the migration networks of Tamaseni because it included a new hosting country - a Catholic one - Ireland. Why is religious an important dimension here? The main difference between the populations of Tamaseni and the other two rural communities (Pelinia and Svishtov) was - and continues to be - the appurtenance to an ethnic religious group, 'the religious membership' (Stan 2005: 7). The population of Tamaseni is predominantly Roman-Catholic (99,66%),2 while Pelinia and Svishtov are Orthodox villages. As I will show later this difference has brought important distinctions in the migration strategies of the villagers and in their local effects, especially economic ones. According to the interviews with both migrants and the local priest, immediately after the Revolution, the catholic villagers from Tamaseni mainly founded their migration strategies on church networks. The Catholic Church was of great support in finding jobs abroad and places to stay. It was a policy of Romanian Catholic Church to send 'delegate priests' in the countries and regions where the most of the believers migrated for work. That is why the Romanian Catholic Church encouraged only the labour force migration in catholic countries. At the beginning of the 1990s a number of Romanian catholic priests were delegated in Israel, in some cities of Italy and in Ireland as well. The local Catholic Church would keep statistical evidence about the distribution of its immigrants in the host country and delegated its priests accordingly. Ac- 2 The data of the prefecture of Neamt County for 2004. cording to the interviews, taken by Stan, '[...] they performed rituals in Romanian for the workers, provided material and spiritual help when they needed and even offered a communication link with the kin members from home country' (2005: 9). The support of the Catholic Church community partly explain why the migrants from the catholic village got better locations and better paid jobs than the migrants from the orthodox villages and why they started migration practices earlier than the other. The Romanian Church today continues to send priests to the Romanian communities abroad administers financial remittances from the migrant networks. An annual (or monthly fee) is donated to the Church by every household which has a worker abroad in order to preserve a better and profitable migration network and to sustain the Church's local needs. Although the support of the Catholic Church is still active, many villagers from Tamaseni established a different pattern and started to rely more on family than on church networks. In contrast with the migration history of the villagers from Tamaseni, the Orthodox Church was less active in supporting the migration strategies of the villagers from Bulgaria and the Republic of Moldavia. These migrants mostly relied on family networks from the beginning. Regarding the role of family networks, 'the villagers from both communities said that family members used to 'pull each other' ['sa se raga uniipe altif] (Stan 2005: 9). The goal of the migrants was not uniform; a part of them aimed at a temporary labour force migration while the others wanted to make a permanent one. As Da Vanzo conjucted (1976: 23) the non-return migration (the permanent one) is expected to be in the direction of higher earnings opportunities, positively related to the difference between destination and origin income. However, the return migration is expected to be less sensitive to this factor (Newbold 1991: 32). The migration in Tamaseni and Svishtov (with the last five-years prevalence rate of migration of almost 30 percent) could be defined as the return migration but in Pelinia the permanent migration had a higher percent, especially in the periods when were conflicts in Transnistria3. Although the temporary migration is defined as a high earning migration, the socioeconomic consequences on family structures and stability are expected to have almost the same effects as those caused by the permanent migration. For example in Tamaseni, the family structure and family norms were strongly affected and challenged since the December revolution and - based on both statistical data and interviews - it can be assumed that migration process played an important role in these changes. The birth rate and marriage rate are decreasing in the village and the divorce rate is increasing (Stan 2005: 17), both being effects of both - temporary and permanent migration. The entrepreneurial behaviour of the migrants has the same form regardless if the migration network is based on the religious dynamic or only on a complex family network. Figure 2 shows the main points of the economic and entrepreneurial case of an extended family regarding the migration's inputs and outputs (remittances). The 'extended family' concept was used in a geographic and economic context, regarding the current use of family inputs and outputs. The actual migration-extended family took the role of the extended family in the communist period because the economic flows were directed upon a similar migration network; until 1990, secondary economy directed the flows from urban to Data obtained in December 2005 from the Pelinia City Hall. rural and vice versa and nowadays from the sending to the receiving countries. In the Romanian and also in the Bulgarian and Moldavian family structures we find an extensive and spacious kin. For example, in Tamaseni and Pelinia, the sanguinity had a high rating percent because almost every person was related with another, which is normal in relatively isolated small-population communities.4 The migration decision is always taken at the family level but the person nominated to work abroad differs from case to case. The migration process is also discussed in the context of the family. Family structures traditionally play a critical role in the everyday lifecycle events such as fertility, educational attainment, and timing of entry (and reentry) into the labour market. In this regard the migration is also in the domain of the family. The migration decision has an important economic dimension, and the research in the villages showed that the low rating income families provided one-by-one pattern of migration and never sent abroad more than one member at a time. This pattern differs from the migration patterns of Mexicans to the United States, where families with young children and low incomes are more likely to migrate to the United States than middle income families because of their greater economic needs (Massey et. al 1993: 437). The pattern in Romania and Bulgaria can be described as a subsistence strategy, used for reducing the initial migration inputs. This strategy was one of the most used in the Romanian and Bulgarian flows between years 1992-1994, immediately after the beginning of de-industrialization. The entrepreneurial behaviour begun only after the household needs and debts were covered. This was also the case of the migrants from Pelinia and Tamaseni. Only a very low resources level forced both parents and sometime the oldest child to work abroad for assuring the household needs. This model was more frequent in the Catholic households or in those cases where the family had more than three little children between 1 and 14 years old. Fig. 2: Temporary migration s inputs and outputs. Entrepreneurial behaviour By the time of the research, Tamaseni had a population of no more than 8335, and Pelinia almost 7924. The data were provided by the Prefecture of Neamt county and the Pelinia's City Hall. Such migration outputs like remittances (financial or social ones) are often used in two clear directions: household needs or investment. This is due to the lack of capital for opening a business and also of some internalized ideas, transmitted from the communist period, according to which a low-profit but steady was is preferred to a job with the income-growth potential but more risk (language proofs). The money brought from abroad is decisive for the path the migrant takes from the entrepreneurial point of view. Each migrant has two viable alternatives: building his own house or starting a business. From this point of view, the question that arises is where the entrepreneurial behaviour starts and where exactly ends the vision in which the investment is regarded as a life strategy. The actual economic context of each described countries (Romania, Bulgaria, Moldavia) does not permit the choice of both alternatives from the start. Because of this reason, the money is first invested is the building of a house, associated with purchasing land (in case if it is not owned by the mentioned holder), or by the substitution of the old one, or the reconstruction of the parents' house. The houses of migrants - called also 'pride-houses' - are also indicators a family welfare. Regarding the investments, the largest parts of authorized firms unfold their business in retail trade and constructions. Tamaseni commune has many constructions companies (many operate on the black market), which were established by the returning migrants. The migrants invest in commerce, zootechnical activities and agriculture. Interviews with local authorities and local entrepreneurs revealed that the migrants are less interested in investing in agriculture. The only exceptions are the areas connected to livestock breeding, professional automated agricultural services and the processing of agricultural products (corn mills, and fodder). The absence of entrepreneurs in land cultivation - regarding the fact that all three communes have big surfaces of plough lands -can be explained by the following economic analysis, obtained from the gathered data The first reason for the lack of entrepreneurs in land cultivation is the abolishment of the former kolhoz-like agrarian organisations CAPs (Colhozuri in Moldavia) and the division of land among those who had land property rights before the collectivization and also among those who worked in the CAPs. The new segmentation of the lands makes the exploitation of the land impossible until de-collectivisation is finished. The second reason is the lack of irrigation systems. Among all villages only Svishtov has an irrigation system solely because it lays on the Danube bank, but this system has not been operational since early 1990s. Thirdly, there is a great change in the professional focus of the migrants from agriculture to industrial sector - especially construction - and domestic services. This change occurred due to the migratory phenomenon which made the migrants take the lesser paid work in the constructions in the host country and thus developed their qualifications in this business. The type of investment which the migrant is orienting towards and the capital needed for such a business are linked to the migration history of a person. From this point of view, there are two categories of local entrepreneurs which are specific to the Tamaseni, Svishtov and Pelinia communes and also to other places with similar migration trends - the survival entrepreneur and the development entrepreneur. Forms of entrepreneurship resemble those described by Dumitru Sandu (2000: 17) in the agricultural annual in Romania, which can be modified to fit other sectors of revenue as well. The first typology associates a recent migration history, with many departures and returns. In the majority of cases in this category the business is started in an inconvenient economical conjuncture, where the market is not supporting such an investment. Because of this the entrepreneurship for a long period of time (2-3 years from the starting point) depends, on money sent from abroad. This can be the case only when the remittances sustain not only the household but also the local entrepreneur. The business is in this case usually oriented to a sector that can obtain profit with considerable risk because of the strong competition. Survival entrepreneurs try to survive on the short-time basis and still retain the option of re-emigration if they fail. The second type - the developing entrepreneurs - usually have successful migration history. They accumulated enough social and financial capital to start a more demanding business with higher starting investments. Because of the higher staring investments they enter a market with less existing competition and, therefore, smaller risk of failure. The socio-economical context in which such business is started is equally important (i.e. low inflation, high unemployment rate, high exchange rate). For the survival entrepreneurs, one of the alternatives is re-emigration. Such migrant in most cases depends on the money he is making abroad. The started business is sustained - at least in the first year - with the funds sent from abroad by the migrant or by his relatives with whom he has started the business (Sandu 1999a: 43). The returning migrants gain also considerable social capital; they develop a more market-oriented attitudes and mentalities, they gain qualifications and specializations, and they copy the business patterns they saw in the hosting countries. Because the legal establishment of a business takes time and money some returning migrants choose to work illegally. They get involved in the so called ditte, groups of 5-6 people who are hired by the day or until the finalisation of a construction project. The ditte are the copies of similar work-teams in Italy in the Romanian context. Regarding the entrepreneurial outputs, those too are redirected upon a family decision. This means that only a part of the initial output will be reinvested, while the other parts are often used for paying old debts, for sustaining the migration network and - last but not least - for household needs (utilities, food, clothing, children's education, house safety, etc.) (Sandu 1999b: 124). The households needs are often more important for a migrant than the risky business and which is best described by an interviewee, who said that in comparison to risk '[...] my family and my household are constantly here' (illegal migrant from Svishtov working in Greece). Conclusion The international circulatory migration can be observed as a local developing factor and the Tamaseni, Pelinia and Svishtov communes are good examples of it. The migrants' departures are realized by the help of others and the businesses follow the same formula. Sums of money and financial remittances which are difficult to quantify (banks, transport firms, Western Union or Money Gram) are coming to the villages mostly by the returning migrants or by the Church (especially in the Catholic village). The starting of a business is also worked out by the families or relatives of migrants who remained in the country. To sum it up, from the point of view of the entrepreneurial behaviour it can be claimed that the temporary migration can cause increase in capital stocks (especially material and human capitals) and in cultural loans reflected in labour ethics and business administration. The sums of money from migrants which enter the sending communities have two clear directions of investment, both being subject to family decisions. The first direction is toward starting a business which determines an entrepreneurial attitude according to the capitalist market rules. Since the entrepreneurship regards social and economical innovation, the investment of this kind has the following characteristics: a) financial and human capital accumulation and their entering the circulation and b) the short-term amortization of the investment by replacing the internal crediting system with the external system. The entrepreneurs who started their business earlier - after the first wave - have advantage over those who are currently starting their business. The second direction of investment is toward houses, cars and lands. The interviews showed that high financial consumption (with limited accumulation) is most often connected to the house building. 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New York: Oxford University Press. Stan, Razvan. 2005. Patterns and Socio-economic Consequences of International Labour Migration on Catholic and Orthodox Villages from Eastern Romania (Neamt County). HESP - Teaching Anthropology. Means and Meanings. Report: 1-21. Van Hear, Nicholas. 2003. Migration Flows. In: IOM World Migration Reports Series, World Migration 2003, Managing Migration: Challenges and Responses for People and the Move. Geneva: IOM World Migration Reports Series. POVZETEK Prehajanje meje ponuja populaciji v stiski možnosti zaslužka po zakoniti ali nezakoniti poti. Članek skuša orisati družbeno-ekonomske spremembe, ki jih povzroča mednarodna migracija delavcev na osebni, družinski in skupnostni ravni ter identificirati osnovne ekonomske strategije, ki so med skupnostmi pošiljateljicami in skupnostmi gostiteljicami vzpostavile odnos razširjene družine. Izsledki raziskave kažejo, da prakse pošiljanja denarja v regijo, iz katere izhajajo migrantski delavci, vplivajo tako na stopnjo organiziranosti migrantskih mrež, na uspešnost prilagoditve v državi gostiteljici (na ravni mreže), na norme, na spolne vloge in na strukturo migrantskih družin kot tudi na (re)konstrukcijo mej, identitet in življenjskih stilov. KLJUČNE BESEDE: pošiljanje denarja, podjetništvo, razširjena družina, mednarodna delavska migracija, migracijske meje, vzhodna post-komunistična tranzicija, migracijski tokovi.