Work, Innovation, and Investment: The Impact of Return Migrants in Barbados

Abstract

Most empirical studies of return migration have found that migrants contribute very little to the development of their homelands. Most studies, however, have been conducted in rural areas among peasant migrants, whose largely unskilled industrial work experience in foreign countries has little relevance to the agrarian economies to which they return. This article examines return migration to both urban and rural settings in the eastern Caribbean island of Barbados. It compares the impact of student migrants—that is, migrants who were college educated or received technical training abroad—with that of worker migrants. The results show that returning student-migrants, most of whom enter professional or other white collar occupations at home, often introduce new ideas and techniques into the workplace. The returning worker migrants have little impact: they are often employed at jobs that do not make use of their overseas work experience and they generally lack the position or authority to introduce changes i...