Emigration from Moldova is a mass phenomenon that has a significant impact on the demography and economy of the state.
Overview
Faced with economic instability, a sharp drop in incomes and soaring unemployment that accompanied the collapse of the Soviet Union , citizens began to emigrate from Moldova on a large scale in the first half of the 1990s. According to the estimates of the Information and Security Service of the Republic of Moldova , from 1,200,000 to two million Moldovan citizens (which makes up almost 45% of the total population of 3.6 million people) work abroad, and the vast majority of them are illegal. Only about 80,000 are legally in foreign countries. Russia (especially Moscow and Moscow Region ), Italy , Ukraine , Romania , Portugal , Spain , Greece , Turkey and Israel are the main areas of emigration (listed in descending order of importance). Due to the secret nature of these migration flows, no official statistics on this topic exist. It is estimated that around 500,000 Moldovans work in Russia, mainly in the construction industry. According to other estimates, Italy also has about 500,000 citizens of the republic.
Moldovan citizens choose for labor migration mainly to those countries where the majority speak Russian (Russia, Israel, less often Ukraine) or migrate to Romanian-speaking countries (due to the similarity of their native language). Russians and Ukrainians go to Russia or Ukraine, Turkic-speaking Gagauzians go to Turkey. [one]
According to 2014 data, remittances from Moldovan citizens abroad account for almost 24.9% of Moldavian GDP , this figure is the fifth highest percentage in the world for this indicator. [2]
Notes
- ↑ Understanding Migration, Emigration from Moldova Archived on May 14, 2011.
- ↑ Migration and Remittances Data . World Bank Date of treatment March 22, 2016.