ABSTRACT
Looking at international migration from Romania, one can distinguish various patterns of migration: people moving abroad definitively for permanent emigration, people leaving on a temporary basis and developing a more circular migration, and ‘trans-border migrants travelling for short periods of time between localities near the border’ (Sandu 2005b: 556). At the same time, studies on Romanian migration from rural communities have identified several migration processes taking place throughout the course of the last twenty years, happening at different paces and with different intensities (Sandu 2000, 2005b, 2006). This finding raises the key question of this chapter: Do rural communities in Romania converge or diverge with each other while undergoing stages of international migration? In other words, are they consistent or inconsistent with each other in relation to the processes, factors and circumstances that make each migration stage feasible and complete?
