Importing prejudice: why is xenophobia surging in Romania?
In the past couple of weeks, xenophobia seems to have reached a new height, with two violent attacks against migrants in Bucharest and Cluj, and with the Bucharest Mayor’s Office social media being flooded with a flurry of xenophobic comments. What does this say about Romania, an emigration-country by excellence? And why are these events happening now?
While Romania has historically been a country of emigration since the 1989 Revolution, with thousands of people leaving for the West in search of better-paid jobs, the country has witnessed in the past half-decade an increase in immigration from outside the EU, mainly from South Asia. These migrants work mainly in four areas of the economy: production, construction, HoReCa, and support services (e.g. cleaning or babysitting). They can be seen on the streets of main cities delivering food with their Glovo or Bolt backpacks riding their bikes or scooters; they can be seen working behind the counter at the famous pastry chain Luca or in the kitchens of numerous restaurants.
Although the yearly work-permit quota has continually increased from 5,500 in 2015 to 100,000 since 2022, it is estimated that around 108,000 migrants live and work in Romania (0,57% of the total population). Since demographic data is not well compiled by the state authorities, it is not known whether all the migrants who receive a work permit and a visa remain in Romania more than one year, or if they leave for other Schengen countries or if they return but there seems to be a mixture of those three situations.
Online incitement sparks real-world violence
Up until now, the Romanian far-right — represented by the parties AUR, SOS, POT and Noua Dreapta (the New Right) — has not had a particularly xenophobic discourse, with a few exceptions. One example is from May 2025 when AUR MP Dan Tănasă stated “I don’t want to see one asylum seeker or refugee walking the streets of Romania” but he was promptly rebuked by his own colleague AUR MP Mohammad Murad who retorted “What would it be like if an Italian or a Spaniard or a German behaved like this with Romanians?”. AUR’s leader, George Simion seemed to have taken Giorgia Meloni’s path, by saying that it is the endless wars in the Middle East that cause waves of migration and that neocolonialism must stop. These two examples also highlight the fact that the Romanian far-right confuses the concepts of “migrants” with that of “refugees”.
Moreover, AUR’s pragmatic approach towards immigration can be explained by the fact that many Romanian business people support AUR, and the import of workforce is demanded by the Romanian employers mainly. One prominent example being AUR’s co-founder and VP, Marius Dorin Lulea, who owns several construction companies tied to other MPs. However, on August 19th, Tănasă made racist and xenophobic public statements on his social media profile, instructing Romanians to refuse food that is delivered by foreigners, with Murad rebuking him again. Ten days later, George Simion reposted on his social media a news story from February 2025 about a migrant worker who had been accused of sexual assault.
Unfortunately, these xenophobic statements do not remain only at the discursive level, but are translated into acts of violence, both in real life and online. As mentioned before, on August 27th, a 20-year-old Romanian broadcast himself on social media when punching a foreign delivery rider in the face. He was swiftly apprehended by an off-duty police officer and was placed in preventative arrest. The same day, a migrant worker was beaten into a coma by a Romanian in Cluj. Nonetheless, the circumstances surrounding this case are yet unclear — it appears to be the case of a Romanian Roma man retaliating against a foreigner who has supposedly assaulted his sister. Following this incident, social media was flooded with misinformation about cases of migrants raping or sexually assaulting Romanian women, with no source of where these information came from. Some users on social media took the bait and started writing xenophobic and racist comments.
A familiar playbook: scapegoating tactics as a distraction from austerity policies
All this seems like it’s taken from the Western far-right playbook, of stoking fear into the local population that foreign young men are raping or sexually assaulting local women. The exact same case happened earlier this year in Northern Ireland, and the irony is that the accused migrants were Romanian. This incident was followed by weeks of unrest and xenophobic riots, leading to violence such as arson (burning the houses where Romanians were thought to be living in), or beating ups. The paradox here is that Romanians themselves have been victims of xenophobia and racism in Western Europe for decades, yet they are starting to become the perpetrators in their own country against foreigners.
The timing of this increase in xenophobic violence is very interesting as well. Following an austerity wave since the beginning of the newly-elected president Nicusor Dan, affecting primarily the public sector, education and healthcare, trade unions are starting to organise for an autumn of protests. On September 8th, a number of protests and strike pickets are scheduled around educational institutions. Class solidarity is slowly starting to be built, with students joining their teachers and professors in protest for example. This xenophobic wave seems, indeed, to be distracting the workers from the real problem they’re facing (austerity) and directing them towards scapegoats (migrants). Unfortunately, just because a group of people was once a victim of xenophobia when they were migrants (the Irish, the Romanians), this does not prevent them from applying the same xenophobia in their own country if the far-right gets a hold of the public discourse.
The urgent need for a coherent response to xenophobia
In the absence of a clear, evidence-based migration strategy, Romania is bound to repeat the same mistakes made by its Western counterparts. There are currently some attempts at drafting some policy — mainly local-level “migrant integration” strategies — but these are not sufficient. Indeed, Romania’s migration policy has been heavily influenced by the powerful lobby of employers associations and the current local-level “integration strategies” are submitted to online public debate. While it is laudable to make policy a democratic exercise, putting a sensitive topic up for online public debate without preventing the spread of misinformation is a recipe for disaster. This is exactly what happened at the end of this summer, when the Bucharest Town Hall put its “migrant integration” strategy up for debate on social media, and in a few hours it was flooded with xenophobic comments. It seems that this was instrumented by far-right groups, with Noua Dreapta being the most plausible catalyst. Usually, online public debates of local matters barely garner any attention from locals, yet this particular one attracted thousands of comments. On September 2nd, Noua Dreapta had scheduled a fascist march through Bucharest, which — incredibly — was initially approved by the Bucharest Town Hall on the grounds of freedom of speech, but was then cancelled following the repeated demands by human rights and anti-facist NGOs and institutions.
Therefore, there is a crucial need to take serious action against racism and xenophobia before it takes hold of the public sentiment — and this action needs to be taken both at the institutional level by state authorities, as well as by the media and the NGO scene. Firstly, it is important to have a coordinated and strong communication campaign against xenophobia and racism, which also includes the voices of migrants. It is important to appeal to Romanians’ sense of solidarity with the fact of being a migrant, to remind them of their migrant experiences and to humanise the foreign workers that deliver their food. Moreover, the state must engage employers associations – vocal in their demand for foreign workforce – by compelling them to finance cultural and social initiatives for migrants and locals. Simultaneously, a concerted effort by state authorities and the media is needed to address a complex but critical challenge: countering far-right misinformation about migrants. Ultimately, any integration strategy is doomed to fail without including migrants in its design. This includes integrating their informal associations into the dialogue process, analysing their needs, and incorporating their feedback. Without this inclusion, policies risk being merely aspirational documents.
Photo: (source: Pixabay, CC0)
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