So hard to go back home: Less than half of Romanians living abroad want to return to their home country

Millions of Romanians are living in other countries, most of them recently migrated to wealthier western European states. However, less than half (47 percent) of Romanians living abroad want to return to their home country, according to a poll conducted by Open-I Research for RePatriot.

The share is 10 percentage point lower than the proportion observed in 2017, suggesting that many became integrated in their residence countries and seem less attracted to return home.

According to the latest official data, 5.6 million Romanians live now in Diaspora.

Romanian diaspora begun at the beginning of the 20^th century when Romanian from Transylvania emigrated to work in the United States.

During the last decade, around 3.5 million Romanians have gone abroad to escape poverty and widespread corruption in their own country, according to a recent UN International Migration Report.

The Romanians living abroad are by far the largest source of capital investment in Romania and contributed to around 2 percent to the GDP in 2017, according to Business Review calculations based on official data.