Assisted to Leave and Become Entrepreneurs: Entrepreneurial Investment by Assisted Returnee Migrants

Despite the research on return migration testifying to a growing and lively debate over the last few decades, research on returnee entrepreneurship remains scant. The context of “non-elite” returnee entrepreneurs remains particularly overlooked by management scholars. This study widens our knowledge by exploring what determines returnees’ decisions to allocate their initial financial investment to microenterprise start-ups instead of the other routes open to them. Drawing information from a sample of 93 African and Latin American migrants supported by an “assisted voluntary return and reintegration program,” the analysis explores the impact of returnee entrepreneurs’ heterogeneous preparedness to return and entrepreneurial motivations behind how much of their available budget they choose to allocate to entrepreneurial investment. The results show that the availability of resources to ensure the satisfaction of basic needs at the household level in the country of origin and other factors related to the returnees’ motivations to establish small businesses drive such entrepreneurial investment allocation decisions. The implications of those findings for future research and policies are discussed.