Available online 19 April 2016
Milena Nikolovaa, b, , ,
- a Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Schaumburg-Lippe-Str. 5-9, 53113, Bonn, Germany
- b The Brookings Institution, Washington, DC 20036, USA
- c The Bucharest University of Economic Studies, Romania
- d Harvard University, USA
- e POP at UNU-MERIT, Netherlands
- f University of Bonn, Germany
- Received 30 November 2015, Revised 15 April 2016, Accepted 17 April 2016, Available online 19 April 2016
Highlights
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- Civil society has an important role for the development of post-socialist Europe.
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- We study the link between civic engagement and having relatives and friends abroad.
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- Having close contacts abroad fosters pro-social behavior in Bulgaria and Romania.
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- The results may be due to the social transmission of norms from abroad.
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- The findings have important implications for national and EU policymakers.
Abstract
The
fall of socialism in Central and Eastern Europe restored ordinary
citizens’ rights and freedoms and ended their political and social
isolation. While the freedom of movement was quickly embraced, civil
society revival lagged due to the eroded civic norms, declining social
capital, and worsening economic conditions. In this paper, we examine
the link between the out-migration of relatives and friends and the
pro-social behavior of the left behinds in two post-socialist
countries—Bulgaria and Romania—the EU's poorest, and among the least
happy and most corrupt member states. We show that having close contacts
abroad is consistently positively associated with civic engagement and
that the cultural transmission of norms from abroad could be driving the
results. Specifically, the strength of the civic engagement culture of
the family or friend's destination matters for the pro-social behavior
of respondents in the home countries. Our results imply that the
emigration of family and friends may have positive but previously
undocumented consequences for the individuals and communities left
behind in Bulgaria and Romania. Given civil society's role for
development in post-socialist Europe and the socio-economic and
institutional challenges that Bulgaria and Romania face compared with
the rest of the EU, understanding the channels fostering civil society
and well-being are important for national and EU policymakers.
Keywords
- International migration;
- Left behind;
- Civic engagement;
- Social remittances;
- Post-socialism
JEL Codes
- I30;
- I31;
- F22;
- P30;
- Z10
© 2016 Association for Comparative Economic Studies. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
