The Labour Migration - Development Nexus. The Case of Two Rural Communities in Romania1.

The labour migration -- development nexus has been analysed from various perspectives, from the conventional one arguing that migration is the consequence of the developmental gaps between sending and receiving countries, to the "3 Rs" perspective2 promoted mostly by Papademetroiu and Martin (1991). At European level, we have witnessed a paradigm shift: from migration perceived as a side-effect of poverty and instability to migration acknowledged as a potential vector for socio-economic development. After 1989, the short - term labour migration has become the main form of migration in Romania, at an accelerating pace. The present paper investigates the impact of labour migration on two rural communities in Romania, by the use of a comparative analysis. The findings of the exploratory study reveal the specificity of the phenomenon in each location as well as the commonalities, revealing "the people behind statistics". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]