Return Migration, Skill Transfers, and Entrepreneurship in Mexico: Implications for Local Development

• In Event: 321 - Section on International Migration Paper Session. International Migration and Development

Abstract

The relationship between return migration, entrepreneurship and economic development is debated in the literature. Numerous studies have documented that remitted savings of emigrants are an important source of start-up capital for microenterprises that in some circumstances can facilitate local economic development. However, others view entrepreneurship among return migrants not necessarily as an opportunity or driver of local development but rather as a function of bad local credit markets and the need to acquire migradollars to start a business. Still others contend that entrepreneurship is a strategy to overcome the barriers associated with reentering the mainstream labor market, such as time lost and age discrimination. We find support for these various explanations, but go further. Drawing on findings from interviews with a representative sample of 200 return migrants in Guanajuato, Mexico in 2010, we argue that launching a business upon return home may be more than just a function of applying remitted savings or a strategy to secure high wages and overcome local labor market failures and constraints. It is also an opportunity to apply new hard-to-measure technical and social skills learned informally in the United States to an entrepreneurial venture that provides individual occupational mobility and opens up possibilities for local development.

Authors

• Jacqueline M. Hagan, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

• Jean Luc Demonsant, Centre for Population, Poverty and Public Policy Studies

• Joshua Thomas Wassink, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill