Ethnographic Reflections of Return Migration in a Romanian Rural Community

Abstract

The objective of the research is to describe the return migration process in a Romanian rural community; we will focus here on the identity changes experienced by community members who recently returned from Italy. We conducted this instrumental case study in Drăguş, Brasov County, where we performed extensive observations. We identified all the persons who have permanently returned from Italy and studied the perceived identity effects of their migration experience. We also collected data through narrative interviews; the data was analyzed by means of coding techniques, and the results are ethnographic reflections of return migration focusing mostly on the way the identity of our participants was shaped by the experience of migration and returning to the original community.

Keywords

• return migration
• identity crisis
• identity conversions
• ethnography
• qualitative data