The urgency of adopting a clear migrant integration strategy

In July 2025, Bucharest’s General City Hall proposed for public debate a strategy for the inclusion of migrants in the capital

Iulia Hau, 12.11.2025, 14:00

The acts of street violence against foreign workers are increasingly making the headlines. At the same time, the problem of foreigners who stay in Romania illegally remains just as acute, with no strategy from the authorities, for the moment, to reduce this phenomenon. In July 2025, Bucharest’s General City Hall proposed for public debate a strategy for the inclusion of migrants in the capital, which aimed to gradually integrate them through concrete measures, from access to public services, to integration through work and education, free Romanian language courses, combating discrimination and civic participation. However, following a wave of hatred on social networks, especially in neo-legionary Telegram groups, the strategy was temporarily withdrawn.

Radu Stochiță, a researcher and trade unionist in Romania, talks about the long-term disadvantages of the lack of integration of foreigners: “If these people want to stay in Romania, we should try to integrate them, and by integration I don’t mean their forced Romanianization. I don’t think anyone would want this, rather I mean knowledge, knowledge of the legal framework in Romania and what’s going on, of the institutions, the schools, the hospitals, of how society works, of how we live our lives. Thus, by integration, we would prevent, on the one hand, the phenomenon that could happen, of ghettoization, in which they would take refuge in their own communities. You don’t necessarily see this with the first generation of migrants. We could say that they are the first generation, but if they want to settle here, the second and third generations, who are already born here or come later, will no longer need to interact with the Romanian community as much as the first generation does. The first generation is dependent, meaning if they want to go to the store to buy things, they have to buy rice from one of the big supermarkets, because that’s how they know what they’re buying. They also have their stores, but mostly they go to stores where Romanians in Romania sell. But the next generations will no longer have exactly the same needs, as we saw in England. If we don’t manage to integrate them, we will have this phenomenon part of which they form quite closed communities, where it’s much harder to enter later and to provide services when needed. I don’t necessarily think that a closed community leads to radicalization or that they become religious fundamentalists overnight. The problem is that no one wants, especially in this era of open societies, to have these core groups of people who don’t interact with anyone.”

The expert presents a second argument related to the need for integration, an economic argument related to pensions and the problems that Romania could have in the coming years with pillar 1. In other words, after 1989, not enough people were born to be able to compensate for the losses in contributions that will come with the retirement of people born after the 1966 decree adopted by the regime of dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, which banned abortion and contraception in order to stimulate accelerated population growth.

Radu Stochiță: “Another argument, as I see it, is the cultural one. Culture is not something static. Romanian culture is not a stone monolith that we all hold in our arms, it is a much more fluid body that each of us influences and manipulates, every day. A culture interacts with others, it interacts with written media, with audio-visual media, with other cultures and adapts over time and also keeps changing. And we can also see this in the interactions with these migrants, who will clearly change and influence Romanian culture, and I am happy, because it is the right way of things. Maybe we will take over certain aspects of their culture, maybe just two or three words, who knows, two or three expressions, a dish which we’ll adapt to our local requirements or it will be a simple mutual respect, in which the two communities coexist and do not interact at all. But I think that it will rather be a cultural benefit for both them and us.”

Another problem highlighted by the researcher and directly related to the lack of a coherent integration strategy is the lack of access to public health services. Although foreign workers contribute equally to the state budget, social insurance, pensions and health insurance, very few of them have contact with the medical system.

Radu Stochiță: “When they have contact with the medical system, often in emergency situations, they bypass, so to speak, the logical way of functioning, of using the Romanian public health system, which starts with primary medicine, that is, family medicine, and only in very serious cases, they reach the emergency room. They practically have no contact at all with family medicine or with specialty outpatient clinics.”

Stochiță argues that, even in the absence of the human argument and speaking strictly from an economic perspective, the fact that someone gets seriously ill only once, because they were not initially treated in primary, preventive medicine and then in specialty outpatient clinics, implies higher treatment costs for the state. The problem, he argues, is that migrants are not informed and supported to interact with the Romanian public health system. (LS)