The Role of the Local Social Protection System and Transnationalism in Migration Decision and Incorporation: The Case of Romanians in Spain

Since 2007, also during the economic crisis and the ‘cuts’ in Spanish national welfare system, the number of Romanians in Spain continues to increase. In Castellón de la Plana, migrants mostly from Dambovita in Romania, continued to develop so called ´demographic enclave´. Even if men migrated from there during this period to other Spanish cities and North European countries where welfare systems could have offer them more benefits, that was only for temporary work that helped in transnational familiar survival strategies and in order to come back to their families in Castellón.
 The results of this study, based on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews in Castellón, show that social protection possibilities was a crucial factor in migration decision and later incorporation in this Spanish city, but there are not changes in national welfare policies that have direct influence on these phenomenas. This is due to the fact that it is not formal welfare that has a magnet function (Borjas 1999) and attracts migrants from the post-socialist country with a strong work ethic, but social protection environment (Faist 2013) and the assemblage of the formal and informal social protection practices (Bilecen & Berglowski 2015), which form a complex local social protection 'ecosystem' that often works beyond the states. Next to the social networks, cities, with its management of national resources, local welfare and the ‘political atmosphere’ that they create, play a crucial role in the efficiency of this ecosystem in influencing migration decision and creation of the patterns of incorporation. Despite what is assumed in the discourses on ´benefit tourism´ and ´welfare migration´ (Benton 2013), as well as studies characterized by ´methodological nationalism´ (Beck 2000; Martins 1974; Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2002) the results from a concrete city cannot be interpolated to another ones from the same state (Glick Schiller & Caglar 2009)