Return Migrant Entrepreneurship and the Migration and Development Agenda: A Focus on Filipino and Indonesian Migrant Workers

Abstract

Major global economic institutions herald migration as key to poverty alleviation in the Global South as migrant workers are believed to be able to leverage financial and social remittances to create wealth in their homelands, and within diasporic communities, through entrepreneurial activities.  Drawing from qualitative studies undertaken in the Philippines, Indonesia and Hong Kong, I explore how Filipino and Indonesian migrant workers are encouraged to assume both the mantle of entrepreneurship and ultimately the responsibility for any subsequent failures of these enterprises.  I suggest that researchers have a role to play in laying bare the evidence for, and offering alternatives to, migrant entrepreneurship as a solution to global socioeconomic inequalities.