Abstract:

In this article I investigated whether higher social tolerance levels in Romania can also be attributed to emigration through its system of social remittances. In investigating this hypothesis I used two waves of survey data from the World Value Survey for building a social tolerance index and analyzing it in relation to country specific questions on migration (specifically having or not friends or relatives who live abroad and also  the frequency of communicating with them). The results from multinomial logistic regressions show that there is an increased probability of having a higher tolerance level for persons who have friends or relatives abroad with whom they talk, the reverse being also valid – higher chances of being less tolerant for individuals who don’t have friends or relatives who have emigrated. The impact of the communication frequency is not that clear cut as high frequency communication doesn’t seem to be significant in the multinomial logistic regression. However, average frequency communication has a direct impact on tolerance while rare communication increases the probability of lower tolerance levels. Association analysis confirms the results of logistic regression.