Introduction

Most young people in this study were born in 1990, a remarkable time from many points of view: the United Nations adopted the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Cold War came to an end and Romania opened its borders to the West; and, coincidently Tim Burners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. All of these were going to open new approaches, opportunities and new ways of thinking. The world was about to change dramatically, not least for Romania's vulnerable children. They were the silent babies who shocked humanitarian workers, journalists and researchers. They became adults in 2008, soon after Romania's accession to the European Union, at the dawn of the global financial crisis but also a time when smartphones became accessible devices and much of people's social identity moved online with the emergence of social media. Their welfare had not only been a concern and a condition attached by the European Union to Romania's accession but also a clash between different schools of thought about what was right for them, with intercountry adoption being a hot potato between different international players as I have explained elsewhere (Neagu, 2015). Those who stayed in residential or foster care received the protection enshrined in the Children Act adopted in 2004, and are able to receive protection from the state until 26 years of age if they are enrolled in some form of education.

At the same time, almost 75 per cent of the young people (14–29 years old) in Romania's general population live with their parents; the average age for leaving the parental home in Romania is 28 (30 for men and 27.2 for women); young people in rural or poor areas have less chance of graduating from post-secondary schools or going to university; almost 40 per cent of young people want to emigrate at least temporarily; personal relationships are considered essential for finding a job; two thirds of young people believe in God (Sandu et al, 2014) while cocaine consumption is one of the lowest in Europe, with a mean of 0.2 per cent compared to 1.2 per cent EU average. This is the wider context in which the young people in the study experienced adolescence and came of age.