Migration Trends in Selected Applicant Countries

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 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). 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.