Economic and Social Effects of Migration on Sending Countries: The cases of Albania and Bulgaria

1. Transnational perspective on migration: the need for the study Until recently, European migration research has been mainly focused on the way immigrants fare in the host labour markets (e.g. what jobs they are doing and by doing them, whether they substitute or complement local labour; what’s their effect on local wages; any fiscal effects: whether they pay taxes, have use of social benefits etc.). I myself have devoted years of research on the effects of Bulgarian migration on the Greek labour market, later on I did similar work on the Spanish and UK labour markets; the only part in my survey work that was somewhat related to effects on the origin referred to questions about remittances (‘How often do you send money home? How much do you send on average per month? What’s the use of the money you send at home?). Not much attention has been paid to the effects of migration on the origin countries. In fact, some US-based anthropologists argued that the traditional migration theory, informed by and developed in service of the nation-state (Kearney, 1991) treated migrants as individuals who either departed (emigrants) or arrived (immigrants). This false dichotomy can only be overcome by accepting that migration is a transnational phenomenon that involves immigrants who ‘forge and sustain multi-stranded social relations that link together their societies of origin and settlement’ (Basch et al., 1994). Thus, sending and receiving countries are understood as constituting one single field of migration analysis. Within such a framework, which is more realistic in migration research, effective management of migration flows (e.g. prevention, integration or repatriation) requires the understanding of the costs and benefits of migration for both the sending and the origin countries.