Migration and globalization: citizen journalism and immigration policies

Abstract

International migration represents one of the most important aspects of globalization that contributes to the evolution and transformation of our lives. In 2000, as the United Nations reports showed, approximately 175 million people lived outside their native country for more than 12 months, a number that doubled with respect to the reference year 1975. This means that there are more and more “clashes” between people around the globe, involving greater responsibility for states in integrating the “moving” society. The public perception is continuously impacted by the migration phenomenon in its different aspects, but the effects are highly dependent on the communities’ social, cultural and religious pre-determination. In this respect, our paper aims to analyse the reflection of the traditional values of the host society to the individual perceptions on immigration, as expressed in various social media. In our view, in order to maximize the success potential of the public policies adopted by the host states in the field of immigration, these must be tightly correlated with the traditional social values, as observed in the real context, and also closely follow the evolution of these values, as expressed in the digital space. For this purpose, we will compare the social media and real life to show differences and resemblances of the attitudes towards the immigrants who might come in Romania from Middle East.