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This article studies the involvement of Western diaspora communities of Transylvanian Saxons in the humanitarian campaign for Romania during the flood disaster in 1970. It shows how the Saxons' private relief campaigns established new forms of connectivity and exchange across the Iron Curtain through a transnational regime of care, ethnic solidarity, and charitable work. The article argues that the contingent and precarious situation of such spatially divided ethnic communities refashioned a generation of World War II refugees and migrants from "speechless" objects of humanitarian intervention into passionate advocates, effective mediators, and surprising champions of private aid giving in postwar Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study approaches in a contextual manner the question of employment in Romania, emphasising: the upshots of the transition from communism to capitalism; the phenomenon of migration; integration into the European Union; and the aging of the population. Meanwhile, the current economic crisis has led to a decline in the number of employed people and in their salaries. The author's intention has been for this approach to facilitate the creation of a nuanced image of employment in Romania through a time-dependent (past-present-future) and geopolitical (Romania as a part of the European Union) analysis. The reaction of the Romanian government to the crisis has been to develop right-wing policies in the name of austerity: employees now enjoy fewer rights while the language around flexibilisation offers them fewer opportunities than it does capital owners as a result of the imbalance between supply and demand on the labour market. The outcome has been an unfortunate reduction in what Gøsta Esping-Andersen named the 'decommodification' of the work force. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]