Bulgaria - The social impact of seasonal migration

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Executive Summary
The report follows the main guidelines of the comparative research outline designed by
IOM-Vienna: brief introduction to the problem from the point of view of introducing
historical background, the statistical development over the past five years (1997 to
2001), the legal and administrative provisions with regard to migration and migration
management, trying to find answers to the main question of the study: How does
migration affect the local society in Bulgaria at this point of time?
The report analyses both out-migration and in-migration trends, but in the Bulgarian case
what seems clear is that out-migration exceeds in-migration, thus emigration rather than
immigration has bigger impact on the Bulgarian society. The public discourse is
dominated by concerns about brain-drain, the economic benefits from Bulgarian
migrants working abroad temporarily, the possibilities for exporting skilled labour
legally, and the harm inflicted by returned asylum-seekers on Bulgaria's image.
Immigrants are not particularly visible yet, and concerns about their number, protection
of their rights, xenophobia or their integration come rarely to the fore. That is why, in
searching for the social impact of migration on the Bulgarian society, the Bulgarian team
will pay more attention to out-migration than to in-migration.
The report is based on secondary analysis of relevant literature (Appendix 1);
normative documents, regulating migration; statistical and border police data about
migration (Appendix 2); sociological surveys on potential migration and on the
economic impact of migration; interviews with representatives of state institutions and
NGOs dealing with migration, as well as with immigrants and emigrants (Appendix 3).
Main conclusions and recommendations:
I. Current migration trends differ significantly from the pre-1989 tendencies.
As a whole, from 1880 to 1988, around 1 283 000 people emigrated from Bulgaria, while
808 600 immigrated to the country. In that period, in-migration included mainly ethnic
Bulgarians living on the territories of neighbouring countries, while the main waves of
out-migration were comprised mostly of ethnic minorities living in Bulgaria,
predominantly ethnic Turks. The main reasons for both out- and in- migration were
political. In-migration flows now include more refugees and foreign immigrants, while
out-migration has no such clearly expressed ethnic profile – it is characteristic for all the
ethnic groups inhabiting Bulgaria nowadays. The main reasons for emigration now are
economic.
The historical heritage has the following consequences for the current migration
patterns:
Firstly, the Bulgarian community abroad is quite diversified, including different social
groups, with different ethnic origin and different motives for emigration. The notion of
different groups of Bulgarians living abroad has been embedded in the new law on
Bulgarians living outside of Bulgaria (of 11 April 2000), which introduces the concept of
"Bulgarian community abroad". The political use of the term “Bulgarian community
abroad” is helpful, but for analytical purposes and in the process of elaborating
concrete policies, it has to be differentiated in order to explain the specific
characteristics of the different groups which ought to be treated in a different political