Milano Centrale. Status ilegal, piețe de muncă și practici transnaționale la migranții români din Milano Milano Centrale. Illegal status, labor force markets and transnational practices of Romanian migrants in Milano Section Studies and Research Papers

Abstract

This study is an analysis of a group of Romanian migrants in Milan and of their transnational practices between Milan and their hometown in Romania. The analysis focuses, on the one hand, on the structure of the environment of the Romanian migrants in Milan (both legal and illegal migrants) and, on the other hand, it relates the transnational practices of the Romanian transmigrants (remittances, flows, circulation) to the main opportunities and risks migrants face. Though very dynamic, these transnational practices are to be seen rather in a less institutionalized and individualized field of social practices between Romanian and Italian localities; besides, in order to better understand these emergent transnational dynamics, the focus of the research is on the local contexts in both countries. In this article I try to demonstrate that the very strong dynamism of the transnational practices of the Romanian migrants is related at least in its incipient phase, to the insecure and speculative character of the migrant environment. Their development is yet unclear.