In January 2012, in several cities of Romania, people turned out to streets to protest. The protests were linked to the wave of movements such as the Indignados or Occupy Wall Street. The students were especially visible among protesters. In this paper, we show that the profile of protests in Romania witnessed a significant shift from workers strikes for higher wages and better jobs, during communism and in the 1990ies, to social movements in which young urban educated citizens mobilize with the help of social networks for issues that are linked to the quality of democracy and life. Furthermore, the shift in protesting is associated, at the individual level, with distrust of the political system, which stimulates engaging in demonstrations. Interestingly, online activism accelerates the feeling of shared distrust of institutions, motivating youth to engage in protest participation, although the effects might be moderate and the causal arrow somewhat uncertain. The hypotheses are tested with data from a general survey on participation in 2012 and a student survey from October 2012. We find that gender, distrust in institutions and family income influence protest behavior. Time spent online has a negative effect on protest engagement and online activism is related to protest behavior.

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The results of the first round 2014 presidential elections in Romania predicted a comfortable win for the incumbent Prime Minister Victor Ponta, the president of the Social Democratic Party.After the first round, Ponta held a 10% lead over the Christian-Liberal Alliance candidate Klaus Iohannis. The runoff campaign was marked by reports displayed on all TV channels showing the Romanian Diaspora not being able to vote abroad. Surprisingly, Klaus Iohannis, who obtained 54% of the votes, won the second round of elections. Iohannis obtained 89% of Diaspora's votes, adding a 4% gain in front of his contender. In most studies on electoral behavior, the focus for explaining why people go to vote is centered at the level of the "country, election, electoral cohort or individual voter" (Franklin 2004). Notably absent from these studies is the impact Diaspora on the election results and the predictors of turnout. The impact on national elections of this category of citizens is not to be neglected and it becomes important especially in democratizing states. In this vein we focus on the predictors that lie behind the political participation and preferences of Romanian Diaspora. We will test two basic models that explain

Few migrants visit and stay in Romania. However, this situation is prone to change with Romania’s imminent joining the Schengen treaty and the critical labor force shortages. It is not a surprise that Romanian institutions are trying to prepare and train for accommodating workers coming from other regions of the world. This paper describes the current housing and status of immigrants in Romania including the perception and the living conditions of immigrants from Romania. Tentatively, I will show that overall living conditions are good but somewhat worse than the locals. Finally, I associate the living conditions to predictors identified in other studies such as income and type of activity performed in the host country. The study is exploratory and intends to reveal information on how immigrants report on their living status in Romania.

In 2017, the anticorruption #rezist protests engulfed Romania. In the context of mounting concerns about exposure to and engagement with political information on social media, we examine the use of public Facebook event pages during the #rezist protests. First, we consider the degree to which political information influenced the participation of students, a key protest demographic. Second, we explore whether political information was available on the pages associated with the protests. Third, we investigate the structure of the social network established with those pages to understand its diffusion within that public domain. We find evidence that political information was a prominent component of public, albeit localized, activist communication on Facebook, with students more likely to partake in demonstrations if they followed a page. These results lend themselves to an evidencebased deliberation about the relation that individual demand and supply of political information on social media have with protest participation.