Ana Bleahu Current Project Ana Bleahu Curriculum Vitae Current Project Emigration is a rather new phenomenon in Romania after 1990. Labor migration of the skilled workers is the most important form of Romanians moving to a foreign country. The official statistics estimated that 2 to 2.5 millions Romanians people (Sandu, coord. 2006) work legally or illegally abroad. Most of them are in Europe, especially in Italy and Spain. The migration of Romanians to Spain and Italy is characterised by two fundamental aspects: 1) most of it is informal, illegal, clandestine migration which, 2) displays a trend to transform into a semi-permanent, lasting migration. This thesis will be focused on the study of Romanian emigrants' integration on "official" and on "informal" labor markets and the role and the dynamics of migrant's network: 1) A particularly interest will be paid to the role of the legislative framework in this process. Regarding integration of Romanians migrants on official labour market will be assessed the effects of immigrants legislation in both countries. There will be analyses the consequences of official policies on the labour market and common life of migrants in the host countries. So, will be counted the advantages and disadvantages on short and long term, of each type of legal work contracts for Spain (Immigation Law, Royal Decree, The Bilateral Labour Agreements Signed by Romania and Spain) and in Italy (The Martelli Law, The Turkish-Neapolitan Law, The Bossi Fini Law). On the other hand will be stressed some of the irregularities of labour recruitment mechanisms in Spain and Italy and Romania. The doctorate will also contain an examination of labour market access and mobility in the two  countries.  In  Spain,  in  particular  Romanians  have

moved out of agriculture into the service sector, but remain trapped there, for the time being. The lack of legal regulations distorts the possible positive effects of the migration for work. The regulatory permissiveness combined with the inadequacy of the legislation to deal with the movement of migrants responding to factors of supply and demand create misbalances both in the destination countries and in the origin countries, affecting the deepest fabric of social relations. 2) A lot of attention will be paid to the informal labor and to the spontaneous strategies adopted by individuals or groups in order to find a job because is well known that in Spain public employment service is involved only in around 15 per cent of recruitment in the Spanish labor market. In these situation migrants network play on important role. My doctoral research involves a comparison of the strategies and networks called into play by these two destinations. Then I consider the impact upon migrants' opportunities, networks and households of host country legislation and administration. In each case social and kin networks provided the initial framework within which migration took place. However, over time (and for different reasons) these networks have disintegrated, leaving most migrants more or less 'on their own' (less so in Spain). The thesis will examine the informal forms of self-organization that arise among the migrants in order to organise and manage the challenges migrants face under a system that needs their labour but refuses to acknowledge this need publicly or institutionalise it openly. Semi-tolerated illegality determines the forms and uses of networks both in the organisation of the migration and in the forms of integration into the labour and housing markets. Some ethnographic and qualitative case studies will be focused on informal solutions to housing and the creation of informal labour markets and the consequences for the migrants of this enforced informality. It emerges that the Italian and Spanish states is caught between toleration and repression, arbitrarily switching from one mode to the other. The research has been a qualitative research based on several short field studies in both Spain and Italy. Because the field trips were funded and carried out as part of team investigations I have access to around one hundred in depth interviews for my analysis which cover the period 2003-2006, allowing me a certain but important time-depth in my analysis: interviews with Romanian migrants, residents in Spain and Italy with or without legal paper, interviews with Romanians with temporary work contract in Spain, interviews with return migrants, interviews with Romanians migrants employs in both countries, interviews with Romanian authorities). On the other hand will be analyzed the main laws, agreements and other official information regarding the subject and the official data about Romanian immigrants in both countries. In presenting the main results and conclusions the starting point will be to compare fairly closely with the three aims of the European Employment Strategy: namely full employment; quality and productivity; and cohesion and social inclusion.