Transnational Youth Migration in Sfântu Gheorghe : Processes, Effects and Policy Challenges. Local Status Quo Analysis Developed Within the Project ’YOUMIG - Improving Institutional Capacities and Fostering Cooperation To Tackle the Impacts of Transnational Youth Migration’

The Local Status Quo Analysis provides an overview of the trends in youth migration and of the related social phenomena, respectively. The study is based on policy-oriented research. The first aim is to synthetize the findings of the YOUMIG research activities concerning youth migration. In this respect we want to characterize and typify the municipalities according to the migratory trends they experience. The second aim is to understand the effects of youth migration, and to identify the policy challenges related to it. Through our applied research we also wanted to provide a brief look into the responses given by local authorities to challenges related to the in- and out-migration of young people. A related goal was to identify the management and capacity gaps in the institutional mechanisms of the local authorities to deal with youth migration and related phenomena. The present case study is based on both qualitative and quantitative methods. Interviews were conducted with institutional actors about the local discourses concerning migration, the way local stakeholders think about the relationship between migration and development, and the kind of local policies that exist in handling the problem of migration. Semi-structured narrative-biographic interviews with young migrants (aged 15-37) were completed. A focus group was organized about the experiences of young people with migration, paying special attention to the administrative aspects of the migration process (i.e. their contacts with the local (and other levels of) administration, the problems they encountered, their opinions about the policies employed by the relevant authorities etc.). The goal was to obtain information this way that can be useful for local decision-makers, policy-makers, stakeholders. Migration forums were also used to identify the challenges connected to the transnational migration of young people. The quantitative research was based on a secondary analysis of existing statistical sources. One should emphasize that quantitative data provide a kind of framework for the qualitative analysis, which constituted the major focus of the investigation and are the primary sources of the present report