| 3,4 million Romanians are working abroad. Among them, 1,5 million are in Italy and more than 1 million in Spain. Economic migration started in the begining of the 1990's to different Western States, but in the 2000s, Romanian labor choosed as favourite destinations Italy and Spain. The proportion of this sudden migration raised a lot of problems in Romania (shortage of qualified labor, more and more cases of abandoned children), but also in the countries confronted with the massive arrivals of Romanians (integration problems, racism). The aim of my paper is to analyse the way in which the Romanian communities of Spain and Italy are perceived, how the social cohesion is promoted in the two countries, in which way the european multiculturalism includes Romanians, how the “strawberry reapers” (as they are mockingly called) changed their image and the way in which Romania is perceived and what Romania did to help the communities abroad. In Italy, the legal system focuses on the acceptance and the legalization of immigrants, but doesn't try to integrate them into the communities (as a result, the xenophobic reaction against Romanians in november 2007). Spain, after a period of indifference, recently started an integration program of Romanian immigrants with the help of Romanian associations and of local communities, both at a social and cultural level. Why the changement of attitude towards the Romanians was possible in Spain, but not in Italy? |
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