CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2024
| Author | Popescu, Ioana Simina |
|---|---|
| Title | "They came here to work". The production of precarity and irregularity within the Romanian migration infrastructure |
| Summary | This qualitative research project examines the recent labor migration of South-Asian migrants to Romania, focusing on mapping the migration infrastructure that emerges in a country usually thought of as an emigration country rather than an immigration one. Based on interviews with actors within the migration infrastructure and (non-) participant observation undertaken between January and April 2024, this study investigates (1) the forms of precarity produced by the current structural configuration, which immobilizes migrants in insecure, irregular workplaces where the threat of deportation looms large; it explores how (2) “imaginaries” of “Romania as a European country” shape migrants’ motivations to embark on this journey, and it also discusses how (3) migrant workers are “cheapened'' firstly by concealing off-shored social reproductive processes that allow them to come and do the work they do, and secondly through forms of othering and essentialization that enable their exploitation. Taken together, my research describes a new, yet familiar story of accumulation, within reconfigured labor frontiers. Lastly, in the context of this “new immigrant destination”, with its particular positionality at the “periphery” of Europe and with its (partially Schengen) border regime, this ethnography aims to document (4) how migrants forge livelihoods despite the structural odds and imagines possible ties of solidarity between South-Asian and Romanian migrants, who share different, yet parallel migration histories. |
| Supervisor | Rajaram, Prem Kumar; Markulla Johanna |
| Department | Sociology MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2024/popescu_ioana.pdf |
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