ABSTRACT
It is currently widely acknowledged that overseas migrants can play a positive role in development processes in the countries of origin. Remittances by individual migrants to their families at home, who use the money for food, consumer goods, education of children, construction, and small business enterprises, attract most of the attention but it is also pointed out that migrants abroad as well as circular and return migrants transfer knowledge, offer access to capital and information for companies, constitute markets that would otherwise not exist, and are a source of tourism back home (United Nations, 2006; World Bank, 2006). They initiate what Farrant, MacDonald & Sriskandarajah (2006) called diasporic fl ows, consisting of a triad of knowledge, investment, and trade that has a direct and visible impact on the economic development in countries of origin.
