Return Migration and Occupational Choice

Matloob Piracha and Florin Vadean

No 3922, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper explores the impact of return migration on the Albanian economy by analysing the occupational choice of return migrants while explicitly differentiating between self-employment as either own account work or entrepreneurship. After taking into account the possible sample selection into return migration, we find that the own account workers have characteristics closer to non-participants in the labour market (i.e. lower education levels), while entrepreneurship is positively related to schooling, foreign language proficiency and savings accumulated abroad. Furthermore, compared to having not migrated, return migrants are significantly more likely not to participate in the labour market or to be entrepreneurs. However, after a one year re-integration period, the effect on non participation vanishes and that on entrepreneurship becomes stronger. As for non-migrants, the migration experience would have increased their probability to be entrepreneurs showing the positive impact of migration on job creating activities in Albania.

Keywords: sample selection; occupational choice; return migration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C35 F22 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 36 pages
Date: 2009-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-ent, nep-hrm, nep-lab and nep-mig
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Published - published in: World Development, 2010, 38(8), 1141-1155

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Working Paper: Return Migration and Occupational Choice (2009)
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