This cross-border investigation reveals how South Asian workers who arrive in Romania on legal work visas are often pushed into a spiral of exploitation that ultimately drives them toward irregular migration and asylum claims in Italy.
Through reporting in Romania, Italy and Bangladesh, the journalists uncovered a transnational chain of recruitment agencies, intermediaries and employers who profit from the promise of “legal migration” while leaving workers trapped in debt and uncertainty.
In Romania, migrants frequently pay large recruitment fees for jobs that fail to deliver the promised wages, housing or stability. Many quickly lose their employment and, with it, their legal status, leaving them stranded without income or valid papers.
Italy’s Decreto Flussi, presented as a legal pathway for foreign labour, often perpetuates the same cycle. Thousands of Bangladeshi workers have paid up to €20,000 for work permits that never materialise. In 2024 alone, the Italian authorities suspended 35,000 applications from Bangladeshi citizens, leaving many who attempted to follow legal routes suddenly at risk of criminalisation.
By tracing the journey from Bangladesh to Romania and onward to Italy, the investigation exposes how fragmented migration policies and profit-driven intermediaries turn legal labour mobility into a high-stakes gamble — one in which migrant workers repeatedly bear the cost while systemic failures go largely unchallenged.