Tunisian New Entrepreneurs and Their Past Experiences of Migration in Europe: Resource mobilization, networks, and hidden disaffection

Abstract

This text concentrates on the economic sociology of return migration, with specific reference to Tunisia. As such, it aims to analyze, on the one hand, the patterns of resource mobilization and the strategies for survival developed by some Tunisian entrepreneur returnees with a view to providing for the survival of their own business concerns, as well as the elements which have shaped their entrepreneurial activities, on the other. By building a typology, which comprises three categories of entrepreneur returnees (namely the 'Heirs', the 'Converts' and the 'New Entrepreneurs') this book sets out to explain how and why some interviewed Tunisian return migrants have succeeded in investing their past experiences of migration, lived in Europe, in their current entrepreneurial activities in Tunisia, while being involved in the dynamics of cross border social and economic networks.