Abstract:

The process of EU enlargement to the Central and Eastern Europe was an important cause among others that directed an immigration wave in Western European countries. In the short term, this process has brought significant benefits to the original countries of these migrant flows: reduced unemployment and social pressures, provided important support to adjust the balance of payments due to the remittances, increased local development achieved through high immigrants investments in their areas of origin. But on the long term there is a decrease in remittances and the labor force losses begin to show their negative effects on economic growth. Therefore, looking ahead CEEC governments began to realize these losses and started to develop programs in order to stimulate the reversal of migrants. Beyond the positive effects on  economic  growth  they  counted  on  an  increased  degree  of  knowledge  brought  by  the experience of immigrants in the highly developed EU countries.
 
Romania’s loss due to labor immigration is estimated between 1.6 and 2.3 million people. In the period before the economic crisis the migrants' remittances contributed substantially to the adjustement  of  the  balance  of  payments, the  economic  loss  significantly  reduced  these benefits. In addition, the effects of labor loss on medium and high skilled levels began to be felt especially through the distribution of activities and job ( Beveridge curve moving to the right). There  were initiated  programs to stimulate the reversal of the migrants wave. Even so, the  creation  of  an  efficient  program  was  difficult  because  the  econometric  estimates  were based on official statistics well below the actual size of the initial phenomenon.
 
This paper is based on a survey conducted on a representative sample (1200) of Romanian immigrants in Italy with  the  objectives of determining the main factors  that  stimulated the immigration process, but also those that could encourage the reversing wave. Italy was chosen along  Spain  as  the  main  destination  of  Romanian  migrant  labor  force  flows.  Authors  have proposed to test the hypotheses of most important theories on international migration process and the efficiency of the programs intended to stimulate the reversal of Romanian immigrants from Italy.