http://digital-library.ulbsibiu.ro:8080/jspui/handle/123456789/3985 2026-04-04T13:20:55Z http://digital-library.ulbsibiu.ro:8080/jspui/handle/123456789/3987 “It Was All that I Could Think of.” Migration, Youth, and Folkloric Entertainment in Rural Romania Cosma, Valer Simion; Constantiniu, Theodor A hybrid that originated in the traditional peasant music, Romanian popular music (muzică populară), as it is known from radio broadcasts, TV shows or live performances from all around the country, was developed by mixing the village music of the twentieth century with techniques and principles borrowed from the classical repertoire and other light genres. Muzica populară emerged in the interwar years, but was perfected and regulated by the communist regime, becoming one of the favorite genres of the rural and urban working class and, nowadays, it continues to have a great appeal among all age categories. Our aim was to discover the motivations that lead the village youth of Romania to involve themselves in activities dealing with muzica populară, in particular, or with folklore and traditions, in general. To accomplish this, we conducted several interviews with young people from Sălaj county, from which a few patterns emerged: the rapid familiarization with the genre due to specific TV channels; the acquired taste due to grandparents raising their grandchildren in the absence of the parents who migrated in the 2000s; the expressed devotion to the local culture and their willingness and duty to preserve and promote it. We can also explain the success of muzică populară among young people by structural factors that are at work in the whole society, namely the lack of interest of post-communist authorities in building and/or maintaining a cultural and educational infrastructure in the rural areas. Thus, this paper aims to explore contemporary rural pop culture by considering the connection between the deterioration of the cultural infrastructure in rural areas, transnational migration and the exponential development of an industry devoted to the recent muzică populară. Cosma Valer Simion; Constantiniu Theodor. “It Was All that I Could Think of.” Migration, Youth, and Folkloric Entertainment in Rural Romania. In: STUDIA UBB DRAMATICA, LXVII, 1, March, 2022, p. 55 - 80 DOI:10.24193/subbdrama.2022.1.03 2022-01-01T00:00:00Z http://digital-library.ulbsibiu.ro:8080/jspui/handle/123456789/3986 The Human Cost of Fresh Food: Romanian Workers and Germany’s Food Supply Chains Cosma, Valer Simion; Ban, Cornel; Gabor, Daniela Fresh food supply chains in Europe’s transnational agribusinesses depend on cheap, non-unionised, and privately managed labour from low-wage eastern European countries. The costs versus benefits of this phenomenon are under-studied. By examining seasonal farm migration from Romania to Germany, we argue that the Covid-19 pandemic is, for farmworkers, a Janusfaced event. On the one hand, it has worsened the precarity of migrant farmworkers. Changes in the German state’s pay legislation that excluded workers from social benefits, and the reluctance of the German state to enforce labour legislation to the full in the early stages of the pandemic, sharpened what we have termed the structural disempowerment of migrant farmworkers. Romanian seasonal workers have had little choice but to implicitly subsidise the costs of German farm products. At the same time, the health crisis has made their work visible and led to processes that challenge the perception of migrant workers as passive agents. In this regard, we refer specifically to (i) the supportive media coverage in Romania, Germany, and beyond and (ii) the assertion of union-affiliated farm and abattoir labour activism in Germany. These planted seeds of contestation, and collective action against abuses sprang up in several farms. Combined with a flare-up of Covid-19 in German abattoirs in the summer of 2020, these campaigns for visibility and improved working conditions led the German government to alter legislation so as to better protect seasonal labour in the fresh vegetable and meat sectors. Going forward, the tension between these two opposing sociopolitical drivers may shape the governance of seasonal labour in Europe. Cosma Valer Simion; Ban, Cornel; Gabor, Daniela. The Human Cost of Fresh Food: Romanian Workers and Germany's Food Supply Chains. In: Review of -Agrarian Studies vol. 10, no. 2, July–December, 2020, p. 7-27. 2020-01-01T00:00:00Z