RETURN MIGRATION AND SMALL ENTERPRISE DEVELOPMENT IN THE MAGHREB
115
returnees who were employers abroad are more likely to be employers after return. Interestingly, the entrepreneurial behavior of returnees appears to differ according to the last immigration country. In particular, returnees who went to Italy are overrepresented among entrepreneurs in all three countries and, within entrepreneurs, among the self-employed. Whether these differences hold when controlling for the returnees’ individual characteristics remains to be investigated. But one possible explanation could be the kind of jobs obtained by migrants from Maghreb countries in Italy compared to the other countries. As shown in table 3.4, there are marked differences in the distribution of migrants by employment status among European countries. While more than 57 percent of the migrants who went to France were salaried workers, only 33 percent were salaried workers in Italy. However, in Italy, the share of migrants who were entrepreneurs at the time of migration was comparatively much higher than in France. Those migrants who went to France could thus be less well prepared to become entrepreneurs. Interesting features also emerge with regard to the characteristics of overseas stay and conditions of return. While time overseas does not seem to play a role in the probability of a returnee becoming an entrepreneur, the reverse holds true for vocational training received abroad: trained migrants are clearly overrepresented among those migrants who became entrepreneurs after migration, especially among those who became employers. This correlation could be spurious, however, and could reflect some unobserved characteristics. For example, those migrants who chose to get trained may be more dynamic or have stronger unobserved ability and skills, and thus may be more able to benefit from entrepreneurial activity on return than those who did not choose to get trained. Whether there is a causal link between vocational training and entrepreneurship remains to be investigated. Turning to conditions of return, figures suggest that those migrants who returned for administrative reasons (that is, those migrants who did not freely choose to return) are underrepresented among employers. The same holds true for those returnees who plan to remigrate. These two results lend support to the idea that those migrants who are “ill-prepared” for return are unlikely to be actors of change in their home country. Interestingly, “forced” returnees are overrepresented among the selfemployed.