Return Migrant Entrepreneurship: A Systematic Review and Future Research Agenda

Why do migrants return home and start businesses? Research on this multistage phenomenon-that is, return followed by entrepreneurship-is fragmented, reflecting different scholarly approaches and reasons migrants return and start businesses (or not). We systematically review 80 papers addressing aspects of returnee entrepreneurship and organize findings into a two-stage process model grounded in three levels of analysis-institutional, social, and individual. Our model contributes by providing a parsimonious way to understand returnee entrepreneurship and describe what has been learned. We also contribute a research agenda to help entrepreneurship scholars leverage what is known about entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial processes to address critical unanswered questions.