Introduction

Substantial research interest has been directed towards the intensified out-migration from Central and Eastern Europe's (CEE) transition countries since the start of reforms in the early 1990s. This out-migration has been an important aspect of the radical socio-economic changes in post-communist countries, and a number of issues have driven the debate about the effects of migration to Western Europe on labour markets and long-term demographic trends. Although many EU countries started to reassess their migration policies upon considering the benefits of labour migration (regarding the labour shortages in some economic sectors), there is still much concern about increased trafficking of irregular migrants and the potential destabilisation of social security and asylum systems in Europe (see Straubhaar 2001; Laczko 2002; Piracha & Vickerman 2003; Martin 2003).

A range of publications reveals CEE migration's various idiosyncrasies, positioning the migration behaviour of Eastern Europeans between the extremes of ‘developmentalism’ and ‘Dutch disease’ (Taylor 1999). Some indications also support the assertion that migrants from South- Eastern European transition countries tend to favour Mediterranean countries as new EU destination countries. This migration is characterised by predominantly short- to medium-term (mainly seasonal) employment, subsequent return or circular migration and a high share of unregistered remittances with a considerable supplementary effect on sending households consumption, but also some use of remittances for household assets acquisition and small business development (Leon- Ledesma & Piracha 2004).

Bulgaria is often considered a country that has not been as severely affected by out-migration processes, as was expected in the context of unfavourable patterns of the early market transition. In fact, during the fifteen years of transition (1989-2004), the Bulgarian population decreased by about 13 per cent or 1.2 million in absolute figures – about 500,000 of which was due to natural decrease and 700,000 due to emigration (Mansoor & Quillin 2007). It could plausibly be argued that the total Bulgarian diaspora, both historical and newly generated, amounts to 2.5 to 3 million, compared to Bulgaria's current domestic population of around 7.5 million. Yet several studies of potential CEE emigration have shown that, despite intensive emigration processes during the economic transition between 1990 and 1994, Bulgarian outmigration pressure ten years later (during the European Union accession period) was felt only within a small percentage of the population (Bauer & Zimmermann 1999; Wallace 1999; Mintchev, Kaltchev, Goev & Boshnakov 2004).