Entrepreneurship of Young Migrants across Mediterranean Borders

The Mediterranean countries, with their specific sociocultural identities, are facing a process of huge and wider integration due to immigration of laborers from other countries. Among the integration mechanisms, migration, especially of young people, represents a crucial tool for changing the Euro- Mediterranean societies and a means of transferring and mobilizing resources across national boundaries. From the sending countries’ perspective, migration experience in Europe, especially for young people that face problems of unemployment and difficulties in acquiring competences and skills at home, offers a unique opportunity of training, of knowledge transfer and brain circulation. Migration in Europe becomes a development tool when financial and social remittances (namely ideas, practices, identities) sent back home by the migrants have significant effect in transforming economies, lives and values of recipient countries. For the host countries temporary migrants can be beneficial to solve market imbalances and to provide examples of different ways of conducting business activities. The paper aims at providing an overview of actual flows of young people across the Mediterranean with particular relevance to human capital (skills and abilities) and entrepreneurial functions. Some evidence will be drawn from returnees of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries as they provide interesting examples of these dynamics