Anatolie Cosciug

Anatolie Cosciug currently holds a dual appointment as a researcher at the West University of Timișoara, Romania, and as Co-Director of the Center for Comparative Migration Studies. He holds a PhD in Sociology from Babeș-Bolyai University and has held visiting scholar positions at the University of Bordeaux, the University of Osnabrück, Paris X University, and the Autonomous University of Barcelona. Anatolie is a co-founder of the ReMAP Network, an initiative that brings together scholars and practitioners working on migration and displacement in the Central and Eastern European (CEE) region. In addition to his individual research projects, he has led and contributed to research and training projects for international organizations, including UNHCR, the World Bank, ICMPD, and the European Labour Authority (ELA). His teaching focuses on migration studies, citizenship, nationalism and ethnicity, and the relationship between culture and migration.

The project

Title: Having pro-and anti-immigrant opinions simultaneously: Migrants Attitudes Toward Other Immigrants in France and Romania

"This project addresses three interrelated gaps. First, much comparative work privileges either large cross-national modelling or single-country analyses, leaving limited space for mechanism-oriented comparison between a Western European immigration destination and a frontline, post-socialist reception context. Second, early-stage attitude formation remains under-specified, even though initial frames and moral evaluations often structure later polarisation and backlash. Third, the discursive environment is often treated as a background condition, rather than analysed as a mechanism through which attitudes are activated, amplified, and normalised, including through hostile speech and polarising narratives.
France and Romania constitute a high-leverage comparison. France is a long-standing immigration destination where asylum and reception are politicised and mediated through established partisan and media ecosystems. Romania is primarily an emigration country and faced large-scale refugee reception in a more recent, security-salient context, shaped by proximity to the war and EU eastern frontier positioning. A France–Romania design therefore offers theoretical and empirical traction for explaining how humanitarianism and selectivity coexist, and how solidarity can shift toward polarisation under distinct institutional and discursive conditions."

Hosting institution: University Paris X Nanterre

Selected bibliography

• Buttler, Dominik, Christian Imdorf, Vegar Bjørnshagen, Anatolie Cosciug, Katarzyna Lipowska, Iga Magda, Marta Palczyńska et al. 2026. Hiring Discrimination in the Organisational Context: A Harmonized Factorial Survey Dataset from Four European Countries (Germany, Norway, Poland, Romania). Sci Data 13, 896.
• Zollie Foss, Melissa L Intindola, Eric C Martin, Anatolie Coșciug. 2025. ''Multi-level Mapping of Tension in Cross-Sector Social Partnerships: A Romanian Response to Ukrainian Refugees.'' Voluntas 36(5): 827–838.
• Esbit, Simon, et al. 2025. "Hope and Distress: A Cross‐Country Study Amid the Russian‐Ukrainian War." Stress and Health 41(2): e70033.
• Kaim, Arielle et al. 2024. ''Mapping societal resilience across eight European nations in the context of multifaceted associations with global indices: An ecological study''. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction 108(June): 104562.
• Bortun, Vladimir, Eva Østergaard-Nielsen, and Anatolie Coșciug. 2024. "‘It was us, from Italy, that made him mayor’: drivers of migrant-led political change at the local level." Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies: 1-18.
• Kaim, Arielle et al. 2024. "From compassion to controversy: Unraveling the impact of societal resilience on the tapestry of attitudes towards Ukrainian refugees." International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction 105 (April): 104326
• Coșciug, Anatolie. 2023. Editorial Introduction: Exploring Return Migration and its Transformative Potential in Romania and Beyond. Social Change Review, 20(1), pp.1-18
• Bivand Erdal, Marta et al.. 2022. On the formation of content for 'political remittances': an analysis of Polish and Romanian migrants comparative evaluations of 'here' and 'there'. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 48 (19): 4485-4502.
• Coșciug, Anatolie. 2022. To Be or Not To Be a Samsar: understanding why Romanian returnees enter the trade with used vehicles. Central and Eastern European Migration Review 11(2): 85-100.
• Bertelli, Davide et al. 2022. Living Here, Owning There. Transnational Property Ownership in Poland and Romania and Migrants' Future (Im)Mobility Considerations Beyond Return. Central and Eastern European Migration Review 11(2): 53-67.
• Croitoru, Alin and Anatolie Cosciug. 2021. Two facets of returnees’ entrepreneurship in Romania: juxtaposing business owners and self-employed return migrants within a multi-method research framework, Quality of Life, 32(2): 1–21.
• Kacper Szulecki et al. 2021. To vote or not to vote? Migrant electoral (dis)engagement in an enlarged Europe. Migration Studies 9(3), 989–1010.