IPN Interview with Nicolaas de Zwager, NEXUS Moldova Project Coordinator, founder and Director of the Vienna-based implementing organization IASCI.
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– On December 18, the fourth NEXUS Center was opened to provide services to migrants in Moldova. Where does the idea come from to open centers here in Moldova?
– NEXUS Moldova is a global prototype and it's the first time this has been attempted anywhere in the world. We at IASCI believe that migration can be made more efficient, from an economic point of view, but also from a personal experience point of view. People usually go into migration to achieve goals that they cannot achieve at home. Usually that goal has to do with some form of wealth accumulation – not only money, but also human capital, skills, best practices, business contacts, networking and so on.
The idea behind NEXUS is to try to make these people as successful as possible. We believe, we know, that successful migrants who achieve their goals in a safe way are more likely to come back to Moldova and invest that capital – financial, human or social – in the development of the country.
Our goal is not foster more migration but rather to make migration efficient, that is, to achieve circular migration, when people go abroad for five years or maybe longer and then come back. In this way we transform migration from being a threat to Moldovan economy and society into an opportunity.
How do we do this? Well, NEXUS is Latin for the word 'connect', so what we do is to basically connect service providers, from the national and local government side, from the private sector and civil society, with the migrant community.
– Of those four NEXUS centers opened in Moldova – in Edinet, Ungheni and Cahul, the one in Chisinau was the last to be created. Why in this order?
– We started out as a prototype, without a model for us to follow. There were six or seven of us at the beginning working out of a kitchen in a rented apartment, trying to see how we are going to move forward on our goals. So we felt that it would be better to build the organization in a structured way by starting at district level, so that we could accumulate experience and learn from mistakes so as to avoid them at a higher level. Now we have the structure and the mechanisms in place that have allowed us to come to Chisinau, a busy area where we expect a lot of visitors to come.
– What future do you see for these Centers?
– The current phase of the project is financed by the European Union and the Swiss Agency of Development and Cooperation, for which we are very grateful, and not only for the financial support, but also because they took a chance on us as a small but innovative organization. The funding period is until the end of 2015, but we are in early discussion now on an extension for another three to five years.
What really distinguishes NEXUS from other initiatives is that it's market-driven: we work with all kinds of companies at the local level, at national and international level, and connect them with the migrants' community, generating business for those companies.
Since those companies and private sector partners benefit from our work we of course expect them to pay us some kind of compensation for that benefit. So on the one hand we are a business-to-client and on the other hand we are a business-to-business organization.
Our long-term perspective is to be part of the Moldovan business community for a very long time. As long as there is migration, there will be a NEXUS Moldova we hope.
At the same time, we are already discussing expanding into Ukraine, in Vinnytsia Oblast, as well as in six northern counties of Romania, with the intention to operate this “small empire” from Chisinau.
However, our goal and our orientation is always towards the migrant first. Any Moldovan citizen can walk into our offices and discuss any migration issues, whether concerning himself personally or a family member. We are also open to migrants thinking about returning. So any stage of the migration process we and our partners seek to make as efficient as possible. For example, if usually it takes migrants ten or maybe twelve years to reach their goals, working with our partners we hope to make the migration process shorter.
Shrinking the migration process also helps to deal with the social problems, the families and children left behind and so on, and this in fact means an efficient circular migration.
So it all comes down to how we can capture the developmental impact of migration in the most meaningful way for Moldova.
– A major finding of a recent research studying migration in Moldova, conducted as part of the NEXUS Moldova initiative, shows that the returning intention is prevailing. But can we really expect migrants to return after they have seen better living conditions and higher paying jobs there?
– We're very proud of the research we've carried out. It's the first time that a probabilistic sampling methodology has been applied that we can safely extrapolate to the general population of Moldova. This research has show that 44,000 Moldovans have returned permanently to Moldova, and half of those came back in the last three years. So returns are happening and they are increasing.
Most Moldovan's don't emigrate, that is, they don't leave with the intention of not coming back, they leave with a returning intention. However, when the migration process is inefficient, it can lengthen the period of migration. So instead of being able to come back in the reasonable period of five or six years, they extend it to ten years or longer. And then they invite the spouse and the kids over, who become little Russians, or little Italians, or little Germans. And if they reach the retirement age in the country of destination, they start thinking if it really makes sense to return after investing everything there.
Another important point that I would like to raise is internal migration, with 210,000 Moldovans practicing it, meaning living in one place and working in another or moving to cities. So migration is much more complex and multifaceted than people leaving Moldova.
– Once people get access to more information and will be better prepared before migrating, don't you think this will stimulate the Moldovans to leave abroad in even greater numbers?
– This is exactly why NEXUS is unique and innovative, because we work with the migrants, with their ambitions and goals, that of going into migration, accumulate capital and return. That circularity is already inherent in the behavior of most migrants.
We live in a time when we have Skype calls everyday, when you're no more than an eight hours' flight away from home. The feeling of Moldovans for return is still high. So once they have achieved their goal, whatever it is, they want to come back. We cannot stop people from migrating. But if we can make a migrant successful in six years – when he still has maintained his connection to Moldova and to his dream – he is much more likely to come back.
I'll give you an example. In Europe the savings rate of an average household is about 4% of the total income; in China the average household savings rate is about 13%, and they are called the great savers of the world. And the average Moldovan migrant manages to save 48% of the household income. They don't go out for beers, they don't dress. Instead, they go to two or three jobs and make as much money as possible in the shortest time possible. Of course, they remit some money and then save the remainder.
So the everyday behavior of Moldovan migrants shows that they don't want to be assimilated into the host country. Their dream is to return home. So we define a successful migrant by their idea of success – that of accumulating capital and come back home.
– How do you think migration will develop in Moldova?
– Migration in Moldova is basically similar to that of other countries in transition. Some people see their personal wealth best served through the exercise of this migration option. Lately, we have seen how the behavior of the people currently in migration has matured: over time they reunify with the family, they start from low-level jobs and rise to the level of competents.
As I said earlier, internal migration is something that nobody talks about but I think it's an absolutely critical question for Moldova. It will become in my view more important than external migration. For example, in such countries as the Netherlands or France the rate of people employed in agriculture dropped from about 40% after WW2 to 4% today. Those people moved from other sector of economy to another one – that is transition, that is development. Towns and villages don't have to die with the agriculture, you can change them through appropriate policies.
Moldova also needs to help those who return from external migration to invest in their own village or town. At the same time we need to work with the local authorities to transition away from agriculture into other sectors. In a country where decentralization is occurring and local authorities will get more powers, I think this is where the locus of migration management should be. This is the forward thinking we need to adopt now.
Note: NEXUS Moldova was launched on 15 December 2012. Four NEXUS Centers have been opened since – in Edinet, Ungheni, Cahul, and Chisinau, which saw the inauguration of the Center on December 18. This was also an occasion to launch the virtual NEXUS Center at www.nexusnet.md – a complex website built to provide information and services just like a regular center. The initiative is implemented by a consortium headed by IASCI and is financed by the European Union (within the Thematic Programme of Cooperation with Third Countries in the Areas of Migration and Asylum), and co-financed by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation .
Elena Nistor, IPN
