Bulgaria - The social impact of seasonal migration

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There are a few Afghan immigrants who had settled successfully in Sofia. The majority
of them work at Iliiantsi market, "where the atmosphere is better for foreigners - there are
Arabs there, all kinds of foreigners" (interview No. 14). These migrants trade with Turkish
goods, and are satisfied with the conditions in Bulgaria. They have bought apartments,
houses and have integrated. For example, a former colonel with 6 children, who is at
fight with his relatives in Afghanistan - thus cannot return - prepares food at home, sells
it at Iliiantsi and manages to survive. Some representatives of the Afghan community
are very poor and receive financial help from richer relatives in the west, sometimes
with the mediation of the embassy (interview No. 14).
Otherwise the permanent Afghani residents in Bulgaria are about 150 families, of 4-5
people each, the majority of whom are former students in Bulgaria. They have two
organisations - a “Cultural Society” and an “Afghan Society” - yet both of them are not
particularly active, owing to the deep political divisions among the refugees. Some of
the members are mujahiddins, others are Communists, while those apolitical are not
welcome anywhere. Afghan children attend Bulgarian schools and speak Bulgarian
better than their parents. Some of the children do not even speak the Persian language,
while others are enrolled in secondary school No 18 in Sofia which teaches Persian,
Chinese, Arab, etc. At this moment, the presence of Afghan immigrants in Bulgaria is at
its lowest level ever. According to a high-ranking official of the Afghan embassy in Sofia,
Bulgaria is a transit country for his co-nationals, who pass through Bulgaria on their way
to the west. Transit Afghan migrants are thousands, and they travel without notifying the
embassy. Yet their number declines, because of 3 reasons - better control on the
Bulgarian-Turkish border from both sides, the wave of former refugees who return to
Afghanistan after the start of the reconstruction of the country, and the poverty of
Afghani in their homeland who do not have 5-6 000 USD so as to emigrate to the west.
The Afghan embassy expects that many of the Afghan immigrants to Bulgaria will return
to their homeland after a 2-year period of active reconstruction there, and the first to go
back will be those with humanitarian status, who are in the worst situation here
(interview No. 14).
2.3. Conclusions
There is no precise unified methodology for observing emigration trends and this leads to the
conclusion that there is an urgent need of elaborating such a methodology and establishing
of a stable, publicly accepted information database on the processes of emigration, that
would be able to take account of the period of staying abroad. There are no data about
seasonal migration, let alone the irregular one. Keeping track of the number of irregular
emigrants is a very difficult task that requires more efforts and coordination among
different institutions, both Bulgarian and foreign ones. A possible partial solution might
be the regular gathering of information from the Bulgarian municipalities about the size
and destination of seasonal migration.
Data from the national censuses conducted in 1992 and 2001 showed that between these
two censuses approximately 196 000 people emigrated from Bulgaria, while the number
of persons who have returned or settled to Bulgaria was a total of 19 000. Net migration
from Bulgaria is negative, amounting to roughly 177 000 people who had left the country
in 1992-2001, or an average of 22 000 people leaving Bulgaria yearly. Other data (of state
agencies, newspaper articles and interviews) show a significantly larger number of
emigrants.