Children left behind by parents working abroad in Romania
Since the fall of the Communist regime in 1989, a quarter of Romania's population has moved to Western Europe. As many as 350,000 children in Romania are missing at least one parent because they are working abroad, according to the UNICEF Country Office Annual Report of 2019.
Parents, particularly from poor and marginalized minorities often face the daunting dilemma of choosing between staying home and struggling to provide for their children's needs, or seeking work abroad to support their families financially, at the cost of physical separation.
In 2021, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted a Recommendation expressing its concern about the devastating impact of poverty-driven labour migration on the children left behind when their parents emigrate, as they are often deprived of basic care, protection, and support, especially in marginalized Roma communities. Leaving that many children without parental care is a mass violation of human rights and countries of origin and destination must put into place comprehensive approaches to labour migration, which are child-centred, human-rights based, gender-sensitive and socially and economically sustainable.
Take a look at the photo essay below made by Mircea Restea in Isaccea, Romania, within ROMACT Programme's work on children left behind by parents working abroad. Learn more about the real-life impact that this phenomenon can have on Roma communities.
A. takes care of her 11 grandchildren, whose parents are away working in Portugal. Three of her sons and their wives left for Portugal at the beginning of the year. They are warehouse workers in harbors and fairs. The oldest grandchild is 11 years old. A.’s sons are sending money home, through other Roma from Isaccea. Yet it does not cover the needs of the children and expenses for food, bills and medicine. If A. manages to top up her phone credit, the children speak with their parents through video calls. She has health problems but cannot go to the doctor because she can't leave the children alone at home. 
"My boys should be glad to find us all alive when they come back, I am not able to do more than that. I'm old and sick, and my grandchildren don't listen to me and can't help me because they're too small", she says. Two older nieces (10 and 11 years old) help the grandmother to cook, clean and put the younger children to sleep. 
A.cannot manage to wash all clothes by hand and provide children with a daily meal. Thus, the children are not going to school or to the kindergarten. She doesn't even have livestock anymore and she still doesn't have firewood for the winter, but she hopes her sons will return home by then. 
She told everyone in the family that she cannot take care of so many grandchildren anymore. But her sons and daughters-in-law cannot take their children with them. They have to work there and they cannot handle children. If they stay at home, they have nowhere to earn a penny. 
The children neither go to school nor to kindergarten. They don't know where their parents are, when they will return or what they are doing abroad. They occasionnally speak on the phone with their parents. 
The grandmother is struggling to provide daily food for so many grandchildren. She cannot cook according to young children needs. She says that the two loaves of bread will hardly be enough for breakfast. 
M. is the daughter-in-law of the grandmother above, A.. They share the same yard, with the houses next to each other. She has three children and for this reason she did not go to Portugal with her husband. In the past, she was also away, but after giving birth to her third child she no longer wanted to leave. She is struggling. Her husband does not send her money regularly, but she hopes to be able to improve her living conditions when he returns. 
She didn't feel comfortable giving details about her husband’s work abroad. She would like them to stop living apart however, since the children are growing up and they don't know their father. She cannot really help her mother-in-law because she struggles with her children. She has no plans for the future. For now, the only option is for her husband to work abroad: "if he stays at home, he has nowhere to work for even a day". 
At the time of the visit, S.'s husband had recently returned from abroad. There, he could only work for a month and spent most money on transportation and daily expenses. He had been away to work in agriculture together with one of his brothers several times before. But this time he could not find a job and came back home before winter started. He is not on the picture. He was out then, looking for firewood. S. was at home with her five children, one of them a newborn and a little boy with autism. She also has a minor mental disability and is largely dependent on her husband. 
S. receives material support from the Sera Foundation, which helps children with disabilities. Yet she cannot follow the recommendation to enrol the child in a therapy program. She would have to go to Tulcea, 30 km away twice a week and does not have a way to do that. She worries that the husband could not make money working abroad, but hopes to find some work nearby. 
The eldest sister soothes her autistic little brother who became agitated in the presence of unknown persons. 
S. is very proud of her three older girls who go to school, study well and help her a lot in the household. They also know how to calm down their younger autistic brother when he becomes aggressive or self-harming. The eldest girl is the best at understanding him, communicating with him (although he is non-verbal), feeding him and putting him to bed. 
A. is in the third grade. Her mother praised that she is doing very well at school, she insisted on showing her tidy schoolbag. 
B. recently returned from England, where she was working with her husband. They were in the UK with the children, working in shifts in a slaughterhouse: she worked during the night shift and he worked during the day. They started having relationship problems when the father got fired and they all returned to Romania. The father is now back to UK on his own, but he could not find work at the slaughterhouse. He is now working for a family where he helps in the household. The young family lives with the in-laws, who take care of their other grandchildren while their parents are working abroad. Thanks to working abroad, the entire extended family improved its living conditions. But it was hard, unsafe and sometimes even dangerous (illegal work, difficult living conditions). B. often thinks about separating from the children's father. It is too much of a sacrifice to live apart. She says long distance relationship means longing, mistrust, suffering, alienation and the children are not listening to her anymore. 
The grandmother is raising alone her grandson whose parents separated when he was a baby. The daughter-in-law (boy's mother) has left and remarried and never visits her child. Her son and the child's father work abroad, along with her other sons. He comes home quite often and sends money, so the child is not materially deprived. 
The boy considers his grandmother as being his mother. Unfortunately, she has not enrolled him to kindergarten and keeps him with her at home. She confessed: "only for him I want to remain in good health" 
View on the Roma settlement in Isaccea
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