Destination Romania: How do migrant workers from South-East Asia enact their social mobility in an EU periphery? – DREAMLAND

Description:

The DREAMLAND research project aims to study the agency of South-East Asian migrant workers in Romania, focusing on their spatial and social mobility strategies. The research aims to provide a bottom-up understanding of the strategies enacted by South-East Asian migrants in Romania in their pursuit of a “European dreamland” through employment and personal development in an EU periphery. The project addresses a significant gap in the existing literature, which primarily focuses on migration from Eastern Europe to Western Europe and generally pays limited attention to the agency of the migrants.

The project has three specific objectives: outlining the institutional context of recent labour migration to Romania, clarifying how the Romanian labour market configures migrants’ social-economic roles, and tracing South-East Asian migrant social mobility strategies in Romania. To achieve these objectives, the project adopts a mixed-method approach, including desk research, secondary data analysis, interviews with key informants, quantitative surveys, qualitative field research, and analysis of visual data.

The project will shed light on how South-East Asian migrants navigate the Romanian labour market and reconcile their personal aspirations with the demands of the system. The expected project outcomes include two articles (submitted to Q1/Q2 journals by article influence), one Scopus article, and a social report in book form, for wide dissemination in Romania.