ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the resources, or forms of capital, that returnees bring back to their home-countries, and the ways in which they generate economic and social change through local investments by means of entrepreneurial activity. It also talks about immigrant transnationalism and in particular the ways in which diasporic agency, by way of entrepreneurship, generates patterns of transnational, instead of merely one-directional, mobility, including the ensuing benefits and challenges. Researchers have come to assess the significance of diaspora for home-countries in ambivalent terms. Whereas remittances and philanthropic donation from diaspora to home-country are on the positive side of the balance sheet, diaspora is also seen as an engine of brain drain. The long-standing engagement of diaspora communities in their countries and communities of origin produces significant flows of economic capital, networks of social capital, knowledge and technology, and cultural capital in the form of education and certified skills.
