Bulgaria - The social impact of seasonal migration

However, in the case of Kalofer, money from work abroad was, indeed, used for starting up
small enterprises. Kalofer is a small town, with 4 000 inhabitants, situated in Central
Bulgaria. It was a famous manufacture and cultural centre during the Bulgarian Revival
in the nineteenth century, and during the Communist regime there were two
enterprises, related to the military industry developed in the region. Now, after a long
period of inactivity, one of the enterprises has been privatised, while the other is still
state-owned and the salaries are not paid regularly. So, the inhabitants of Kalofer started
looking around for strategies that would help them cope with the situation, with
migration becoming one of the most popular of them. There are no statistical data about
migration from Kalofer, but an in-depth inquiry had revealed that a lot of people, mostly
women, are going for seasonal work abroad – either in Greece for picking oranges, or in
Spain and Germany as baby-sitters, cleaning ladies and housekeepers. Usually this
migration is seasonal, but some of the migrants are staying longer. After returning home,
most of them start up private businesses. All the pubs and cafes in the town are owned
by people who had been working abroad. A young family couple, who has picked
oranges in Greece for two consecutive summers, has accumulated enough money and
has now started a private business, first opening up of a shop and now developing of an
aluminium joinery workshop. The couple recounted that the months spent in Greece
were one of the most horrible in their whole life, with working for 11-13 hours a day
under the burning sun, living in terrible conditions – 20 persons in a hot and dirty
barrack, and with practically no rest. Yet one of the spouses also admitted that “in spite
of all the troubles, work in Greece was a good start for our business, I could not manage
to open it up with these salaries here. And what I learned from our work there was that
the best thing in the world is to be your own master rather than to work for other masters
– be they the state or [private] employers” (interview N 22).
It turns out that it is not the money and the specific know-how which is the most significant
“import”, but the cultural lessons related to a new organisation of work and life that produces
a new worldview (Weltanschauung). Here is a part of the interview with a 53 year old
woman from Kalofer: “I have worked in Greece for 8 months and when I came back here I
realised that the most important thing I had earned was not the money - actually it was not
so much - but the very stay and work there that had changed me. In Greece I understood
that here in Bulgaria we are still living with our socialist mentality, waiting something to
happen to us, and not struggling for achieving it. In Greece I learned how to be active and
combinative in order to survive. And also how to be strict and responsible - no delays, no
explanations – if you have to do something you have to do it. I understood that I had to take
control of my life, to be more enterprising and inventive. So, when I returned from Greece
I was a different person. And I started to think what I shall do in order not to be dependent
only on my salary. Then a person from the Bulgarian Association of Alternative Tourism
came here in order to look for houses appropriate for alternative mountain tourism. And I
said to myself – that is it, why do I have to work for this Zig Zag tourist firm, when we can
develop our own tourist business” (interview No. 20).
The two different cases, in Kirkovo municipality and in Kalofer, require further research
and analysis in order to explain why there was no strong cultural impact upon attitudes
and behaviour in the former one, whereas in the second, things went in the opposite
direction. What is common to both cases, though, is the strong western influence upon
local consumer practices.
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