Migrants are defined as people “who cross international borders in order to settle in another
country, even temporarily” (IOM, 2012a). Currently, about three per cent of the world’s
population is living outside its country of birth, which makes us the most mobile generation in
the human history (IOM, 2012b). The globalization, the encouraged mobility, the lowering
costs of obtaining information, the development in communications and the global demand
for workers have accelerated the migration flows also from Bulgaria. In the last two decades,
the country has turned into a large source of migrants and has been significantly affected by
the consequences of the outflows. Since the fall of the Communist regime in 1989, the
population of the country has decreased by about 18% or about one million and sixty hundred
thousand people in absolute figures (Table 1). Although the low birth rates and high mortality
remain the main reasons for this population reduction, the migration has also played an
important role.