Democrats on the Streets. Drivers of Student Protest Participation in Romania

Since 2011, protests in post-communist Romania have changed their goals. Protesters claim to guard fundamental values of democracy such as the rule of law and fair representation and to rise against institutions crippled by corruption. In similar fashion to the 1989 revolution and the early 1990s protests, students have assumed an active role in these events. They took to the streets in Bucharest, Cluj, Ia?i and Timi?oara, the country's four largest cities, and elsewhere. Over the same period, social media has proven essential for the gathering of information, for coordinating collective action and expressing the young protesters' identity. Yet recent research (Badescu and Sum 2018) canvasses a gloomy picture of Romanian youth, said to have an eroded democratic profile. This situation is not unique. In Hungary, age and the display of authoritarian attitudes are inversely related, unlike in Poland (Fesnic 2015). Eastern Europeans might have finally rejected the remnants of the previous regime, yet the new generation is eager to embrace values that are not necessarily democratic. Value change trends bring out new interpretations to the way the transition to democracy unfolds in Eastern Europe. This paper addresses this contrast by discovering the combination of attitudes that drives youth to protest. With the help of a student survey conducted in 2017, it is shown that protest engagement is positively linked to the pro-democratic and diversity-embracing attitudes of students

Migrant Political Participation and Voting Behavior in Romania

The results of the first round 2014 presidential elections in Romania predicted a comfortable win for the incumbent Prime Minister Victor Ponta, the president of the Social Democratic Party. After the first round, Ponta held a 10% lead over the Christian-Liberal Alliance candidate Klaus Iohannis. The runoff campaign was marked by reports displayed on all TV channels showing the Romanian Diaspora not being able to vote abroad. Surprisingly, Klaus Iohannis, who obtained 54% of the votes, won the second round of elections. Iohannis obtained 89% of Diaspora’s votes, adding a 4% gain in front of his contender. In most studies on electoral behavior, the focus for explaining why people go to vote is centered at the level of the “country, election, electoral cohort or individual voter” (Franklin 2004). Notably absent from these studies is the impact Diaspora on the election results and the predictors of turnout. The impact on national elections of this category of citizens is not to be neglected and it becomes important especially in democratizing states. In this vein we focus on the predictors that lie behind the political participation and preferences of Romanian Diaspora. We will test two basic models that explain participation (Franklin 2004). First there is research that focuses on the social determinants of voting (Verba and Nie 1972) labeled as “the baseline model”. Another stream of studies includes electoral system effects and political system format (Blais and Aarts 2006, Cox 1997, Franklin 2004). We claim that Romanian Diaspora voters participate in higher numbers in presidential elections when the number of voting stations increases. Romanian diaspora consistently votes with center right wing parties and candidates. This vote is associated with liberal policy preferences and support for issues that promote libertarian attitudes. We test these hypotheses with elections results data from 2000 to 2014 coupled with data collected from Votulmeu.com an online Voting Advice Application from the 2014 presidential elections in Romania

Student Participation and Public Facebook Communication: Exploring the Demand and Supply of Political Information in the Romanian #rezist Demonstrations

In 2017, the anti-corruption #rezist protests engulfed Romania. In the context of mounting concerns about exposure to and engagement with political information on social media, we examine the use of public Facebook event pages during the #rezist protests. First, we consider the degree to which political information influenced the participation of students, a key protest demographic. Second, we explore whether political information was available on the pages associated with the protests. Third, we investigate the structure of the social network established with those pages to understand its diffusion within that public domain. We find evidence that political information was a prominent component of public albeit localized activist communication on Facebook, with students more likely to partake in demonstrations if they followed a page. These results lend themselves to an evidence-based deliberation about the relation that individual demand and supply of political information on social media have with protest participation

'Yes We Vote': Civic mobilisation and impulsive engagement on Instagram.

Social media have become increasingly central to civic mobilisation and protest movements around the world. Emotions, symbols, self-presentation and visual communication are emerging as key components of networked individualism and connective action by affective publics challenging established political norms. These emerging repertoires have the potential to reignite civic engagement, although their coherence and sustainability have been questioned. We explore these phenomena through an examination of Instagram use during the 2014 Romanian presidential election. Voting irregularities during the 1st round, particularly affecting the diaspora, gave rise to an impulsive civic movement utilising social media to express solidarity and drive turnout in the 2nd round. Using an original coding framework, we look at how narratives of identity, community and engagement were visually constructed by users on Instagram; the activities, settings, spaces, objects and emotions that comprised this multi-authored story. Our analysis reveals the creation of a loose “me too” collective: an emotionally charged hybrid of self-presentation and participation in a shared moment of historic significance, which otherwise lacked particular norms, political agendas or hierarchies. The civic movement on Instagram materialised primarily through photos documenting the act of voting; an imagined community that combined co-presence in physical space with virtual solidarity through photos of ballots, flags and landmarks. The platform appears to favour impulsive, symbolic and affective expression rather than rational or critical dialogue. As in other cases of post-systemic grassroots engagement, individuals came together for a short period of time and expressed the need for change, although this remained largely an abstract signifier

Indexul Integrării Imigranților în România 2017

Last years brought about, again, the topic of migration to the mainstream Romanian media. The media rearticulated some themes that were already discussed and brought to the public attention in the past ten to fifteen years. When in 2002 Romanian citizens obtained visa-free agreement to the EU, the main theme was the large number of Romanians who have left the country. In 2007, when the country joined the EU as a member state, the discourse on migration was about anti-immigration debates in the Western Europe and the expulsion of Romanian citizens back to Romania. Today, the discourse revolves around the refugee crisis and the fact that Romania started to receive migrants and refugees, and that in the future it may host large amounts of Muslims. Most probably, this last topic will continue to stir up heated debates in the Romanian public space. According to various data, the number of international immigrants arriving in Romania is of about 370,000 people. This means that migrants make up about 2 % of the country’s population. Even though this number is not that high and it draws not much attention, it is still of utmost importance that Romania has started to develop migration policies and methods to measure migrants’ integration before facing large-scale migration. The current report and the index of migrants’ integration therein is such a measurement and it provides a general image of how migrants’ fare in Romania. It was constructed using other similar tools (MIPEX, Zaragoza indicators, and so on) and aims at adapting them to the Romanian context. It focuses on migration policy, labor market adaptation, and the relationship between migrants and the institutions dealing with immigrants’ integration. This synthetic data allows us to obtain a longitudinal image of immigrants’ integration, compare data from different regions and cities, as well as compare the Romanian data to the data from other older and newer countries of immigration. Such data on immigrants’ integration is not just needed for policy purposes, but for public debates also. Given that the Romanian public debates started to be shaped by populist stances and fears of refugees and “Muslim invasion”, or of “disappearing European culture”, analytic data is useful in countering such speculative claims. The analysis carried out in this report provides a different perspective in which immigrants, even though they arrived in the past years only, tend to integrate well in the Romanian society. On the other hand, one shall state the limits of this type of approach. The report does not focus on specific groups, or specific places; it only aims at providing a general image of immigrants’ integration in Romania, and more fine-grained analysis is needed for specific topics. And, in order to obtain such information, especially on immigrants’ integration difficulties, addtional qualitative and quantitative research is needed. The report offers, though some surprising data on immigration to Romania. We thus first noticed a high rate of employment among asylum seekers and third country nationals; and not only they are employed, but tend to fare better than the average Romanians. Given that the country has a huge number of unemployed and underemployed persons, this result came actually as a surprise. Looking at the data, though, we realized this is so due to the fact that migrants went to Romania’s major cities, such as Bucharest, Timişoara, Cluj, Constanţa, or Iași, were salaries are higher. In a country with stark inequalities, such as Romania, there is no wonder then, that a person in a large city has a better job than someone living in a small city in a disadvantaged region. And that migrants tend to integrate rapidly on the labor market is actually not a novelty in migration studies. A second surprising data is also related to Romania’s social and ethnic inequalities. The survey data revealed that immigrants are favorable to the Roma people and that the social distance between immigrants and the Roma is by far much smaller than between majority Romanians and the Roma. In itself this data does not allow us to speculate on the future interethnic relationships in the country, or if the racist attitudes will be countered by more tolerant ones, however we may hope to be so. Thus, the index we managed to build, the survey data and the interviews we carried out gatheres the first set of data in the field of immigrants’ integration in Romania; it may help policy makers to build informed policies about migration in Romania and it presents novel data that the Romanian public is not aware of. As a matter of fact, international migration, to which Romania has to adapt as a country of origin, will generate new challenges, this time as a country of transit and destination. In this vein, the present research is a first step in this process

Democrats on the Streets. Drivers of Student Protest Participation in Romania

Since 2011, protests in post-communist Romania have changed their goals. Protesters claim to guard fundamental values of democracy such as the rule of law and fair representation and to rise against institutions crippled by corruption. In similar fashion to the 1989 revolution and the early 1990s protests, students have assumed an active role in these events. They took to the streets in Bucharest, Cluj, Ia?i and Timi?oara, the country's four largest cities, and elsewhere. Over the same period, social media has proven essential for the gathering of information, for coordinating collective action and expressing the young protesters' identity. Yet recent research (Badescu and Sum 2018) canvasses a gloomy picture of Romanian youth, said to have an eroded democratic profile. This situation is not unique. In Hungary, age and the display of authoritarian attitudes are inversely related, unlike in Poland (Fesnic 2015). Eastern Europeans might have finally rejected the remnants of the previous regime, yet the new generation is eager to embrace values that are not necessarily democratic. Value change trends bring out new interpretations to the way the transition to democracy unfolds in Eastern Europe. This paper addresses this contrast by discovering the combination of attitudes that drives youth to protest. With the help of a student survey conducted in 2017, it is shown that protest engagement is positively linked to the pro-democratic and diversity-embracing attitudes of students.<br /

The Housing of Immigrants in Romania

Few migrants visit and stay in Romania. However, this situation is prone to change with Romania’s imminent joining the Schengen treaty and the critical labor force shortages. It is not a surprise that Romanian institutions are trying to prepare and train for accommodating workers coming from other regions of the world. This paper describes the current housing and status of immigrants in Romania including the perception and the living conditions of immigrants from Romania. Tentatively, I will show that overall living conditions are good but somewhat worse than the locals. Finally, I associate the living conditions to predictors identified in other studies such as income and type of activity performed in the host country. The study is exploratory and intends to reveal information on how immigrants report on their living status in Romania

Policy and Voting Preferences of Romanian Migrants 2000-2016

In most studies of voting behavior, political preferences are explained at the level of the “country, election, electoral cohort or individual voter” (Franklin 2004). Notably absent from these studies is the impact of voters living abroad. Their importance is not to be neglected, especially in democratizing states. This research targets the predictions that lie behind the turnout and preferences of Romanian emigrants. Romanian Diaspora consistently votes for parties and candidates that promise reforms. This vote is associated with liberal economic policy preferences and support for minority groups. I test these hypotheses with elections results data from 2000 to 2016 coupled with data collected from Votulmeu.com an online Voting Advice Application from the 2012 parliamentary and 2014 presidential elections in Romania

Democrats on the Streets. Drivers of Student Protest Participation in Romania

Since 2011, protests in post-communist Romania have changed their goals. Protesters claim to guard fundamental values of democracy such as the rule of law and fair representation and to rise against institutions crippled by corruption. In similar fashion to the 1989 revolution and the early 1990s protests, students have assumed an active role in these events. They took to the streets in Bucharest, Cluj, Ia?i and Timi?oara, the country's four largest cities, and elsewhere. Over the same period, social media has proven essential for the gathering of information, for coordinating collective action and expressing the young protesters' identity. Yet recent research (Badescu and Sum 2018) canvasses a gloomy picture of Romanian youth, said to have an eroded democratic profile. This situation is not unique. In Hungary, age and the display of authoritarian attitudes are inversely related, unlike in Poland (Fesnic 2015). Eastern Europeans might have finally rejected the remnants of the previous regime, yet the new generation is eager to embrace values that are not necessarily democratic. Value change trends bring out new interpretations to the way the transition to democracy unfolds in Eastern Europe. This paper addresses this contrast by discovering the combination of attitudes that drives youth to protest. With the help of a student survey conducted in 2017, it is shown that protest engagement is positively linked to the pro-democratic and diversity-embracing attitudes of students