Enhancing the spirit of entrepreneurship: African labor migrants returning from Israel

Enhancing the spirit ofentrepreneurship: African labormigrants returning from Israel

Galia Sabary and Michal Pagisz,�yDepartment of African Studies, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, 6997801, Israel; zDepartment of Sociology and

Anthropology, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, 52900, Israel.�Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

Abstract

Contemporary studies on return migration express a growing interest in the cultural

and social dimensions of its economic development. In this article we aim to extend

this interest by focusing on economic values returning migrants bring back with them

to their countries of origin, captured in what we call the ‘entrepreneurial spirit’. The

article is based on in-depth ethnographic fieldwork with Sub-Saharan African labor

migrants both in Israel and after their return to their country of origin. Utilizing a

Weberian perspective on the connection between values and economic action, we

illustrate that even though African migrants work in menial jobs in Israel and very few

acquire professional training, they come to utilize Israel as an informal space for the

enhancement of a ‘spirit of entrepreneurship’. This spirit contains three valuative trans-

formations: a transformation concerning time (including a valuing of the future over

the present); a transformation concerning individual action (replacing the primacy

of community with a focus on individual flourishing); and a transformation in social

relations (extending trust beyond friends and family to economic partners). These

transformations are in line with economic values underlying a capitalist economic

system. The expression of these value orientations acts as an important factor through

which African countries have become increasingly interlinked and influenced by neo-

liberal culture. Yet, as the testimonies of African labor migrants reveal, local social

structures reside side by side with this imported spirit of entrepreneurship. This

hybridity may lead to increased opportunities, but also to feelings of estrangement

and frustration.

Keywords: return migration, culture, values, capitalism, Sub-Saharan Africa, Israel

MIGRATION STUDIES 2014 � 1–21 1 of 21

doi:10.1093/migration/mnu045

! The Authors 2014. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email:

[email protected]

Migration Studies Advance Access published October 14, 2014 by guest on O

ctober 19, 2014http://m

igration.oxfordjournals.org/D

ownloaded from

http://migration.oxfordjournals.org/

1. Introduction

Israelis are excellent businessmen; they know how to make money. They knowhow to keep their money and spend it right . . . they don’t just brag and spendmoney like Africans . . . I know I learned this in Israel . . . when I came back andopened my business, I realized I’m doing things like an Israeli and not like aGhanaian. (Richard�, Kumasi, Ghana 2005)1

In 1987 Richard was one of the first Ghanaian labor migrants to Israel. Returning to

Ghana in 1999, he is now the owner of a building materials shop at the center of the city of

Kumasi and a building contractor. Although Richard came from a relatively high status

family, for many years he and his wife worked as cleaners in Israel. This is in keeping with

many other Sub-Saharan African labor migrants who came to Israel in this period. Due

to changing Israeli attitudes towards labor migration, together with his own increasing

yearnings to be with family left behind in Ghana, Richard returned to Ghana under his own

initiative.

Following his return to Ghana, Richard established a business enterprise with money

he and his wife had saved during their time in Israel. However, when asked about the way

his experience in Israel had contributed to his life in Ghana, he chose not to speak about the

financial aspect, even though this financial asset provided an important means for his

family’s readjustment to their country of origin. Instead he emphasized the value of social

and cultural assets he had gained in Israel. His work as a cleaner had supplied him with

much more than a fiscal profit. The interactions with his employers, who came from

relatively affluent strata in Israeli society, served as a training sphere in which he encoun-

tered and assimilated a new economic ethic which included a different (non-Ghanaian) set

of values and moral judgments regarding the use of money, time, self and others.

While most debates regarding return migration focus on economic, rather than cultural,

aspects of return (Levitt and Lamba-Nieves 2011), a growing number of studies have begun

to illustrate the importance of social and cultural elements that are carried back to the home

country. Out of these different ‘social remittances’ (Levitt 2001), we would like to focus on

one aspect that is relatively neglected—the remittance of economic values. While previous

studies uncover the place of acquired professional skills and social networks in the process

of return migration, the question of the remittance of economic values is rarely discussed.

Following Weber, we suggest that economic activity involves more than access to money

and technology, or skills and social connections. We see economic activity as a cultural

practice based on a set of values and a worldview that produces motivation for a certain kind

of action. Weber (2002[1930]) named this ‘Geist’, meaning mind or spirit. Drawing on this

notion, we name the set of economic values that are articulated by Sub-Saharan African

labor migrants who return from Israel the ‘spirit of entrepreneurship’. This spirit is part of

the modern, Western, capitalist attitude that emphasizes individual economic success and

the narrative of the self-made person. It is not based on professional skills or knowledge, but

instead is composed of economic values regarding time, individual action and social trust.

These values produce a set of motivations and practices (including, for example, long-term

planning, time management practices, expressions of creativity and individual responsi-

bility, and changed social relationships). We will argue that these aspects of an

2 of 21 � G. SABAR AND M. PAGIS

by guest on October 19, 2014


Dow

nloaded from


entrepreneurial identity constitute an important cultural remittance that returning

African migrants bring back to their home countries.

In this article we relate to the terms ‘Africans’ or ‘Israelis’ neither as ontological cate-

gories nor as structures that are analytically unified. When we refer to the ‘Israeli’ versus the

‘African’ or ‘Ghanaian’ economic spirit, we are using the terminology—and with it, the

generalizations—used by the returning African migrants themselves. These generalizations

are part of the experience of return, in which dichotomies and hybridities reside side by

side. By no means do we claim that all Israelis are endowed with a spirit of entrepreneurship

or that most Africans lack this spirit. These are ideal types generated by the returning

migrants in order to create order and make sense out of their experience of return.

In addition, the ideal type of the Israeli economic attitude is not superior to the Sub-

Saharan African one. Each has its merits depending on context and purposes. African

migrants, who are characterized by their search for economic success, find the Israeli eco-

nomic spirit useful for achieving their purposes, and thus tend to view it as superior.

In doing this, they often ignore the negative edge to the Israeli economic attitude.2 As

this article shows, the adoption of the entrepreneurial spirit and its implementation in

Africa may lead to financial success, but it can also lead to feelings of frustration and

estrangement.

2. Returned labor migrants and the cultural aspects

of economic activity

A review of previous studies on labor migrants’ return to their lands of origin reveals that

the majority define economic processes in a narrow sense, focusing on their financial

contribution to the growth and development processes in these countries (Levitt and

Lamba-Nieves 2011). For example, the new economics of labor migration (NELM)

model views labor migration as a response to market failures in the country of origin

(Stark 1991), limiting the motivation of labor migrants to that of fiscal earnings and

savings. As Constant and Massey (2002) write, under this model, people seek to migrate

abroad for limited periods of paid labor, either to remit earnings or to accumulate savings

in anticipation of an eventual return home. In many studies on return migration, this

motivational issue is carried across to define the parameters of what it is that return

migrants gain from their new contexts. The issues studied thus center around the money

sent back home, or the money they bring with them on their return (exploring, for instance,

whether this money is used for entrepreneurship, or the way it affects macro- and micro-

economic processes that take place in the country of origin). In the African context, aca-

demic studies mostly point out that money African labor migrants send back home is not

used for entrepreneurial purposes and that their contribution to the development of

macroeconomic processes in Africa is therefore subsidiary (see Adler 1985; Hermele

1997; Massey et al. 1998; Adepoju 1998). More recent studies have shown that some of

those who have returned with great sums of money, or with particular professional train-

ing, or who have returned to construct new businesses (even with meager savings), have

exerted some influence on micro- and macroeconomic processes (Ammassari and Black

ENHANCING THE SPIRIT OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP � 3 of 21



Dow

nloaded from


2001; Black 2004; Black, King and Tiemko 2003; McCormick and Wahba 2001; Gubert and

Nordman 2008).

We argue that the emphasis on the financial contribution of migrants to their home

countries, or on their motivation to increase their savings while working in low status jobs,

fails to explain the main value that African migrants report to have acquired during their

time in Israel. This value is not fiscal but cultural. We thus join the recent effort in migra-

tion studies to counter the emphasis on financial profit and ‘bring culture back into

migration debates’ (Levitt and Lamba-Nieves 2011: 2).

Recent studies on return migration to Africa recognize the neglect of attention toward

social variables and attempt to integrate social capital into the analysis of the return mi-

grant’s entrepreneurial activity. Black and Castaldo, for example, claim that for migrants

who returned to Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire, ‘networks, contacts and wider experiences that

migrants gain abroad may be as important, or even more important than money’ (2009:

56). Ruben, Van Houte and Davids suggest that the process of return migration consists of

a number of parallel processes: economic relocation (i.e. the availability of material to

provide for stable living); social relocation (i.e. knowledge and access to social networks);

and, eventually, psychological-social relocation which helps to build up an individual’s

identity and their feeling of security and belonging (Ruben, Van Houte and Davids 2009;

Davids and Van Houte 2008). Still, even though some studies speak to the circulation of a

‘neoliberal’ cluster of ideas and norms, they do not look specifically at questions of eco-

nomic values and ethics. This neglect may be due in part to a fear of replicating somewhat

stereotypical oppositions between a traditional economic spirit that is seen to characterize

the third world and a capitalist spirit that is seen to characterize the first world. While we

agree that such stereotypes are problematic, we cannot ignore the fact that these oppos-

itions and dichotomies are a central part of the experiences reported by returning African

labor migrants. Thus, when we speak of transformations in economic attitudes and values

we are basing our analysis on the terminology and self-reporting of African returnees.

According to Weber (1968), economy is much more than a material structure—every

economic process includes ideational structures that involve certain values. While Weber

acknowledged the importance of materiality, he emphasized worldviews and beliefs which

act like ‘switchmen on a railway track’, pushing action in general, and economic action in

particular, directionally along certain tracks (1946: 280). In Weber’s example (2002

[1930]), modern, Western economic processes cannot be fully understood without under-

standing the spirit of capitalism. This spirit is composed of a set of values and beliefs,

an ethic, which serves as the essence of capitalist economic actions.

We define the entrepreneurial spirit as a set of values and moral judgments which African

labor migrants report to have acquired in Israel, a spirit which they attempt to utilize in

order to become business entrepreneurs in their home country. This spirit has resonance

with Weber’s capitalist spirit but is not identical to it. In opposition to neo-Weberian

approaches we do not regard the spirit of entrepreneurship as leading to one ‘common

end-state’ (i.e. a capitalist system or a neoliberal state) (Long 1977: 69). Instead, by choos-

ing a local ethnography, we seek to demonstrate how specific values that are at the base

of a ‘way of doing business’ in Israel are selectively adopted by Africans. In addition,

by following the attempts of Africans to utilize some of these values in their home countries

without adopting the whole package of neoliberal, capitalist culture, we uncover the




Dow

nloaded from


complexity and hybridity in which local African values at times coexist with, and conflict

with, the importation of the Israeli economic spirit.

3. Context: Israel and Sub-Saharan Africa—oppositions

and resonances

In many parts of Africa, capitalist ways of thinking and acting have already been in place for

some time, alongside local cultures and modalities of thought and action. The strong

dichotomy that Richard and other migrants portray between the ‘Ghanaian’ (or for that

matter any other Sub-Saharan African country of origin) economic attitude and the ‘Israeli’

one hides an important affinity in perspectives and aspirations between Israelis and

Africans. For example, already in the 1960s Hart (1975) observed how local Ghanaians,

who had never left Ghana, aspired to become entrepreneurs and escape poverty. All Sub-

Saharan Africans who opted to migrate to Israel (whether from Ghana or elsewhere) were

already motivated to make a profit, thereby improving their economic situation. They were

therefore a self-selected group based on their initial entrepreneurial motivations and

aspirations.

At the same time, studies show that Israelis are characterized by a spirit of entrepreneur-

ship. This spirit is based on individual, rather than collective, efforts. It is in line with the

Western, modern, neoliberal culture which has been growing in Israeli society over the last

30 years. In relation to population size, Israel produces more start-up companies than any

other capitalist nation (Senor and Singer 2009). The Economist (Wooldridge 2010) notes

that Israel now has more high-tech start-ups, and a larger venture capital industry per

capita, than any other country in the world. Opening a business and becoming ‘independ-

ent’ has become a central Israeli dream. Because of this alignment of aspiration, African

labor migrants, who frequently dream about opening a small business in their home coun-

try, find Israel to be a perfect arena for entrepreneurial training.

The first large wave of Sub-Saharan Africans to enter Israel as workers arrived in the

beginning of the 1990s.3 Choosing Israel was a new phenomenon, which can be explained

in part by both the growing restrictions imposed by European countries on African mi-

gration and the fact that Israel, for the first time in its history, recruited international

migrant laborers. Once the borders were seen to be open, further undocumented laborers

started to find a way to enter, Africans included. Most Sub-Saharan Africans entered Israel

on pilgrimage or tourist visas and then overstayed their permitted time. There are no

official figures for the number of illegal African labor migrants living in Israel by the end

of the 1990s, but informal figures put the number between 10,000 and 14,000.4 Due to mas-

sive deportation, this figure dropped to between 2,000 and 4,000 by 2004.5 The majority

came from Nigeria and Ghana, with smaller numbers from almost all other Sub-Saharan

African countries. Their ages ranged from 25 to 35. Many came from urban and semi-urban

areas, and a large percentage had completed at least 10 years of schooling (Kemp et. al. 2000;

Sabar 2004).

In Israel, most Africans were employed in menial cleaning jobs. Some worked in light

industry, small construction companies, or gardening. A few started their own businesses,




Dow

nloaded from


usually to meet the needs of other migrant workers. Our data suggests that most African

labor migrants who left Israel, either voluntarily or by force, returned to their former

geographic locations. Most of the returned migrants interviewed in this study were self-

employed in Africa at the time of interview, in various business ventures that they had

established using the capital and skills they acquired while in Israel.6

There is an apparent paradox in that African migrants, most of whom were Protestants,

came to Israel to work under Jewish employers in order to learn how to ‘do business’. After

all, according to Weber, it was the Protestants who introduced capitalist values to the

world, which are a part of the entrepreneurial spirit. Most of the Ghanaian labor migrants

followed one of the very many African Pentecostal versions of Protestantism. Although it is

beyond the scope of this article to go into a detailed analysis of African Pentecostalism, it

should be noted that many Pentecostal movements embody a unique melange of modern

and pre-modern traditions (Meyer 2007). The religious background of African labor mi-

grants both pushes them toward entrepreneurship and personal development, while sim-

ultaneously tying them to traditional values that place the interest of the community before

that of the individual (Sabar 2010).

4. Methods

The findings presented here draw on earlier research on Sub-Saharan African labor mi-

grants in Israel from 1996�2005, and a more recent ethnographic study in Africa among

returning labor migrants conducted in 2007�8 and in 2012. A substantial part of the

research was done in Ghana, including 50 in-depth interviews as well as hundreds of

hours of participant observation. In addition, 21 in-depth interviews were conducted

during two short field trips to Kenya as well as 16 telephone interviews with immigrants

who had returned to Nigeria. All interviews were conducted in English. All interviewees

were asked similar questions based around two major foci: a retrospective look at life

experiences they had accumulated as labor migrants in Israel, and an examination of

their homecoming process.

From the time research on African migrants began in Israel in 1997, qualitative meth-

odologies were adopted. This has led to the establishment of profound personal long-term

relations between researchers (ourselves included) and many of the subjects from these

earlier studies. Once Africans started to move back home and research agendas were

broadened to include issues related to the complex realities and worldviews of return

migration, those return migrants involved in the earlier studies were the first to be ap-

proached. Hence, instead of a random sample, the first informants were selected on the

basis of personal contacts. Through them a snowball process emerged whereby interviewees

recommended the participation of further individuals in their community. Within our

sample, the financial success of the returning migrants was highly varied, from people who

became extremely wealthy on their return to those who failed financially. The fact that the

fieldwork was conducted in their home country with the researcher present as the Visiting

Other seems to have enabled interviewees to reflect freely on their lives as undocumented

migrant laborers in Israel as well as minimize their need to justify their worldviews and

actions.




Dow

nloaded from


Our small-scale samples that are inherently embedded in the qualitative research were

partly controlled by triangulations involving ethnographic interviews and long-term ob-

servations (Heyle 2001). The data itself was analyzed using an interpretive approach and

critical discourse analysis methods to develop emergent categories for interpretation

(Lieblich et al. 1998). When analyzing the data we found that the themes of moral trans-

formation regarding the use of time, the importance of individual action, and form of social

relations appeared in every interview. Each empirical example that appears in the article

documents a type of response that was also found within the data of other subjects and

is thus illustrative of the spectrum of responses collected in the study.

5. Enhancing the spirit of entrepreneurship

Analysis of interviews conducted in the study revealed that African labor migrants speak of

their life in Israel as a training period in which they observed and absorbed local economic

(entrepreneurial) values. This finding was evident despite two important factors that would

seem to work against it. First, only a minority of the labor migrants learnt a new profes-

sional skill in Israel. The large majority spent their years working from morning to evening

as cleaners in private homes, hotels or restaurants; work which they considered to be

humiliating and degrading. Second, the majority of labor migrants were either deported

from Israel, or left of their own will when under the threat of deportation, and thus were not

able to accumulate the full sum of money they were planning to save during their time in

Israel. For many migrants, these two factors transformed a significant part of their stay

in Israel into a negative experience, with many expressing negative feelings towards the

Israeli government and Israeli society. Yet, even under these tough conditions, these labor

migrants still identified one important positive effect of their stay in Israel; namely, their

encounter with the entrepreneurial spirit.

In what follows we explore this entrepreneurial spirit through three analytic categories:

first, of the moral dimension of time, which includes the economic valuing of time and a

valuing of the future over the present; second, a shift in the moral value associated with

individual action, in which a moral code based on the primacy of community shifts toward

one centered around the individual (with an increased emphasis on individual responsi-

bility and personal success); and third, a transformation in social relations, in which trust

begins to extend beyond friends and family, a transformation that might be considered

necessary for a capitalist economic system to succeed. In each category we introduce

representative examples that were found in our data.

5.1. The moral dimension of time

In the past, several researchers have contrasted the Western linear conception of time

with African cyclic conceptions (Mbiti 1970; Mawere 2011). However as increasingly

larger parts of the continent were exposed to Western notions of time, these two concep-

tions of time have come to simultaneously coexist, often merging one with the other

(Oke 2005). The spirit of entrepreneurship, as presented in sub-Saharan African migrants’

testimonies, is based on a linear understanding of temporality. Entrepreneurial time




Dow

nloaded from


embodies moral judgments regarding such elements as time management, work ethics

versus leisure time, and the value of the future in relation to the present.

Many of our interviewees reported that the idea that ‘time is money’ is a lesson they had

learned in Israel. Richard (who we introduced earlier in this article) learned this concept

while being subjected to what some may call inhuman conditions of time control when

working as a cleaner in a hotel:

I have started to change already in Israel while I was working in the hotel . . . Theyhad this clock; every morning when I came to work I had to tick it and even if I took ashort break, I had to tick it again. Everything was precise, time was measured. At theend of the month they used to calculate my breaks and if I took too many of them—they took some money off my salary. Very quickly I learned these issues of time-. . . [laughs] I truly understood what it means when people say: time is money.(Richard, Kumasi, Ghana 2005)

The interviewees tended to contrast this with African conceptions of time that were

presented as oriented toward the present. Take, for example, Elizabeth�, a 28-year-old

Kenyan who lived in Israel for six years and worked as a babysitter for a wealthy Israeli

family:

I remember that one day my boss was looking at a book about Thailand and talkingwith her friend about her trip there . . . . I was worried because I thought that she isgoing soon and I will not have a job so I asked her when she is going . . . . She said sheis going after eight months . . . . I started to smile . . . she asked me why I was smilingand I said to her: I never think so far . . . I never heard about people who are planninga trip like that . . . you want, you get money you go. Today, when I have my ownbusiness I know that things should be done in a different way. (Elizabeth, Nairobi,Kenya 2007)

A second example is given by Emilia�, a 41-year-old Ghanaian woman who lived in Israel

for nine years and worked as a house cleaner in the private sector:

You are really very, very different. You plan and save. I can explain: one lady I used towork for told me that every day, every day, she puts little money aside because herson has a big celebration . . . I think he was about 12 years old. I asked her, when is thecelebration? And she said: next year . . . I asked her, why did she start to save now?And she told me that if she will not save, she will need a loan and she will havedebts. . . . I asked her why she was not asking her family to give her money, to give itright before the big celebration? . . . She said she does not want to take money fromother people, because when you do so, you always have to pay back . . . I still re-member that I thought to myself—this woman is strange, what she is doing is notgood, but then I spoke about it with Edu and now I think this is a very good way. It isbetter than what we do . . . it is better than our way . . . (Emilia, Kumasi, Ghana 2005)

After returning to Ghana, Emilia and her husband Edu� attempted to implement this

new economic spirit in regard to their own future. Whereas Ghanaian society in general

(and return migrant families in particular) regard building a house to be their first priority,

often one that reflects their success (Black, King and Tiemoko 2003), Emilia and Edu

decided to go against the grain. They rented a house and invested their savings in opening




Dow

nloaded from


a business. In the interview, Edu moralized that people should think about their economic

future rather than their current social status. He emphasized the importance of restraining

certain desires, such as having a house, a car or golden jewelry, in favor of future economic

success: ‘Many people think that building a house is the most important project . . . As you

see, we thought in a different way: first to start a business, then a house.’

This entrepreneurial orientation toward time also places higher moral value on work

time rather than leisure time. According to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, Israelis

spend an increasing amount of time at work, while leisure time is constantly decreasing.

This fact did not escape African labor migrants. Harriet, who returned to Ghana and began

a musical career that grew out of singing in Israeli churches, judges the way she used to

spend leisure time with friends:

[B]efore I went to Israel I used to sit with my friend and talk and talk . . . . Long hoursof just talking and talking . . . . We never thought of time. . . . Today I’m different . . . Ihave my goals and I think how to achieve them . . . I ask myself, how will mybusiness be in several years? . . . What shall we do in the future? I try to work accord-ingly with a clear time line. This is very important for us. (Harriet, Kumasi,Ghana 2005)

Likewise, Moris�, who used the money he saved in Israel to open a shop, expressed

a strong ethical stand toward the ‘leisure time’ bosses enjoy at the expense of their

workers:

[in Israel] . . . you work people [hard] but you also work yourself. My bossalways worked with me . . . here the boss will just sit and drink tea the wholeday, but you are not like that . . . today I run my business myself. I work hard.I don’t go away and leave the job to some little boy to do. (Moris, Kumasi,Ghana 2005)

If time is valued as money, then leisure activities now seem wasteful. Yet while this

immersion in work may be productive for advancing one’s business, such an attitude

can have a negative impact on social and familial relations that are bolstered by spending

time together. While such an impact may be difficult to measure, we will return to this

point in the last section of this article.

5.2. Individual action

The contemporary version of Israeli entrepreneurship is built on the ideal of the self-

made person and this is rarely a communal project, though it can involve collaboration.

This is an important characteristic of the entrepreneurial spirit described by African mi-

grants who frequently expressed their belief that their future is dependent on their actions

alone.7 As one interviewee stated: ‘I, myself, don’t trust anybody in my family to take care

of me in the future. I don’t want to trust my kids or other relatives of mine. I know what

to do to ensure my future.’ They expressed a strong moral belief in independence that

is accompanied by a desire for certain degrees of freedom from ties binding them to

extended family and community.




Dow

nloaded from


This emphasis on independence and individual responsibility was revealed in discus-

sions regarding the impact of the forced deportation from Israel. Though many migrants

expressed a negative view of Israeli policy, they still chose to blame individuals and not

the social system for their situation. This is amply revealed in Edu’s words:

If you work in Israel for three years, you can save enough money to build somethingsmall when you go back . . . so in many cases the failure is not deportation but lack ofplanning. . . . All those who did not go to church, did not go to parties . . . just savedand saved all the time . . . they could make a lot of money in three years . . . (Edu,Kumasi, Ghana 2005)

Edu ignores the social conditions that may have led to the economic failure of the

migrants, and instead chose the neoliberal narrative of great personal responsibility.

In his mind, the problem was not one of government deportations, but of people’s failure

to plan ahead.

The ideal of individual action goes hand in hand with a relatively anti-traditional and

anti-communitarian approach. Naana, who cleaned households that belonged to the Israeli

upper class, expressed this change in his worldview:

I learned to look at people in a different way. . . . Before, I used to check what kind ofcar this man is driving or what kind of clothes they buy. . . . In Israel, I worked forpeople who made millions of dollars in high-tech, and you could not know bylooking at them that they were so rich. . . . They invested their money in thingsyou can’t show off with, you can’t show them to the people out there. . . . Theirdaughter, for example, went to a university in Paris because they said it is the bestplace for her to study . . . things like this. . . . They invested their money in things thathave real value . . . not in things that come and go, like we do. (Naana, Cape Coast,Ghana 2005)

Like many other migrants, Naana criticizes the traditional value of expressing one’s social

status through public displays of wealth. In so doing, he diminishes the importance of

communally sanctioned judgments. Naana seems to ignore the fact that studying in Paris

may also be a status-oriented strategy. What Naana counts as a valuable possession changes

from something that can be displayed publicly to an investment in education and the

development of the individual.

The shift toward individual action that values personal responsibility and personal

success is accompanied by ideals such as self-actualization and achieving the capacity to

realize high aspirations. In this way, business entrepreneurship is distinct from what

Hechavarria and Reynolds (2009) called necessity entrepreneurship. Bijaoui (unpub-

lished) notes the majority of small businesses in developing countries are necessity-

driven (see also Frese and de Kruif 2000), however, the spirit of business entrepreneur-

ship is one in which the goal is not just to make money to survive, but to reinvest in

the business in order to fulfill one’s dreams, one’s highest aspirations. This kind of

entrepreneurship is growing in Africa. As Bijaoui (unpublished) shows, one of the main

places through which this spirit is promoted is in the new training centers for entre-

preneurship which are opening across Africa. We would like to suggest that cultural

remittance from nations such as Israel is another source for the dissemination of this

spirit.




Dow

nloaded from


David�, who opened a small shop for electronic supplies in the heart of Kumasi market,

describes the importance of aspiring beyond basic needs when conducting his business:

I come from a rather rich family in Ghana . . . but I decided to go to Israel to learn theway you people live. . . . It was hard. I had to clean houses . . . but I managed to save alot and to change the way I think about the world . . . look at our store for example, itis just like those on Allenby Street [a major shopping street in Tel Aviv]. It does notlook like all these stores around us. Every month I call my friends in Israel and we talkabout life, about things that are happening. Every time I talk to them, I get new ideas;I learn new things . . . some of them might even do business with me . . . They help medream high. (David, Kumasi, Ghana 2005)

The money David saved was only one of the things he brought back from Israel. The stores

around David’s shop were small, unorganized and had a mixture of products with no

specialization. In contrast, David’s shop specializes in small electronic supplies, and the

products are displayed in an organized, marketable fashion. His stay in Israel not only

taught him new ways of marketing and doing business, but also gave him the courage to

stand out and be different from the merchants around him.

David’s testimony is a clear example of the well documented importance of social capital

and the role international networks play in successful entrepreneurship. Importantly, his

testimony discloses a further factor social capital contributes that is rarely discussed,

namely, the unique role social networks play in helping return migrants maintain high

entrepreneurial aspirations. Monthly calls to his Israeli colleagues enable him to continue

to ‘dream high’ and aspire to yet greater economic success.

Isabel�, David’s wife, opened a lingerie shop on the outskirts of Kumasi town. Her shop

was probably one of the first to publicly display lingerie in a rather provocative manner. Her

marketing strategies are based on knowledge she acquired from Israeli friends:

When I opened this shop, people looked at me with a bad look, but I did notcare . . . I’m a good person, a good Christian. This is not cheap. This is somethingwe women need and I display it in a way that makes people want to comehere. . . . This is called marketing . . . you see, I learned from you people and I keeplearning all the time because I still have friends outside of Ghana . . . (Isabel, Kumasi,Ghana 2005)

Isabel’s stay in Israel provided her with both the motivation to bring in bold new ideas and

the imagination and daring to act anticonservatively. When Isabel speaks of her shop it is

clear that she is proud of her difference and individuality. She resists conservative criticism

and introduces new creative approaches to women’s lingerie that serve her marketing goals.

As such, she is not only promoting her own business, but also serving as a cultural agent,

promoting values that are part of the neoliberal approach to women’s bodies.

Although David and Isabel’s businesses were first approached with hesitation, with time

their shops had become a success. During our visits to the shops we noticed a considerable

number of customers that was distinctly higher when compared to shops around. Even

though the products David sold could be found in many different shops around, the

specialization of his shop and his marketing strategies, including neat display, attracted

the locals. In fact, in a return field trip conducted in 2012 we learned that David and Isabel

are now counted amongst the wealthiest millionaires in the region. Today, in addition to




Dow

nloaded from


small electronic supplies and lingerie, they have moved to the importation of vehicles and

construction materials from China, not only to Ghana but also to other countries in the

region, including Nigeria and Benin.

5.3. Transforming social relations—the value of economic trust

Capitalist society is based on a system of trust without which it would be difficult

to advance long-term economic activity. Trust is a moral evaluation of another person

as someone who will fulfill an agreement or a promise. The adoption of an entrepreneurial

spirit requires that this trust extend beyond friends and family to people of whom one

has relatively little knowledge. I trust that contracts held with distant partners will be

met, and obligations realized. I trust that my business partner is someone on whom

I can rely. This changing attitude toward trust in others—and the transformation of

social relations that it engenders—was a recurring theme in the testimonies of African

labor migrants.

What we observed was that alongside the return migrant’s rejection of community,

tradition and family dependence, is an accompanying change in their relationship to stran-

gers who are part of their growing entrepreneurial venture. This transformation in social

values began while they were in Israel. Across the interviews one example kept reappearing:

the surprise labor migrants experienced when they were given keys to the houses they

cleaned in Israel. As Edu described:

I learned to trust people . . . you see, in Israel this thing is amazing. You give trust topeople you don’t know, strangers, those who just walk in your house. . . . I always gotkeys to the houses I cleaned . . . some of my bosses did not see me for months.Because I had keys, I would come in, work and go. They would leave memoney. . . . Sometimes they would call to tell me: do this, do that. That’s it. . . . Icould do whatever I wanted but I didn’t . . . this is amazing . . . we [Ghanaians] don’teven trust our own families and you let complete strangers into your homes,give them keys and go to work. . . . I never imagined this can happen, but I saw itwith my own eyes, so I know this is true. I liked this way very much. (Edu, Accra,Ghana 2005)

Moses�, a 36-year-old Nigerian, noted this trust explicitly when he said:

All around the world people think of Nigerians as thieves, as people who are nottrustworthy . . . . only you people trusted us . . . you gave me keys to your home . . . welet ourselves in and out and you were not even there . . . everything in the house wasthere, open . . . nothing was locked. . . . This is something no one will do inLagos . . . never. (Moses, phone conversation to Lagos, 2007)

The trust that labor migrants described was reciprocal. First, the trust the employers gave

the workers when giving them the keys to their houses. Second, the trust the labor migrants

gave their employers when they entered the empty houses to clean, or when their paycheck

was delayed. Ezra�, a 41-year-old Kenyan who returned from Israel after 16 years, described

the reciprocity of this relation aptly:

We came to work in your houses and you left us money on the table . . . you trustedus that we will do our job and not just take the money and go . . . sometimes you did




Dow

nloaded from


not leave money, you forgot, but we knew that next time you will pay us. Here, youget the money only when you finish your job and you will not trust someone to payyou in the future. (Ezra, Nairobi, 2007)

The above observations regarding the importance of trust as a moral value fit

well with Simmel’s (1950 [1903]) description of capitalism. While the metropolitan

residents adopt an estranged attitude towards others and develop their individual

identity, they concomitantly become more and more dependent on one another in

‘reciprocal relationships’ of trust (ibid: 328). Thus, social trust in modern capitalist

societies no longer depends on family relations or on one’s community. For the

metropolis to work, and with it the economic system on which it relies, there is a

need for complete strangers to share ‘punctuality in promises and performances’, such

that people who have never seen one another can trust each other in their economic

transactions (ibid: 328). For African labor migrants this trust became an important

moral characteristic through which to evaluate themselves. They expressed pride in the

fact that others trusted them, and offered this fact as proof of their positive ethical

conduct.

Many returned migrants attempted to extend economic trust to others who are not a part

of their family when returning to their home countries. However, this attempt was rarely

reciprocated and frequently led to financial failures. Immanuel�, who worked in Israel for

14 years, blamed his failure as a businessman precisely on the lack of a shared culture of

trust. When asked what he had learned from the Israelis, he answered, ‘I learned

trust . . . trust. I learned it from the Jews. I believed the Jews and they believed in me.

Trust is a very, very important thing.’ When asked if he can implement this trust in

Ghana, he responded:

It is not easy. When I returned to Ghana and met people, already in the begin-ning, they cheated on me. . . . In Israel they trusted me right from thebeginning. . . . They gave me a key and knew I would not take anything. Here itis different. The Ghanaians have such a mentality . . . (Immanuel, Takradi, Ghana2005)

Over a phone conversation with Eben Ezra�, a 52-year-old Nigerian who had lived

in Israel for 15 years and was a deacon in one of the local Pentecostal churches in

Tel Aviv, his frustration was loud and clear:

It took them four or five months to take all my money. . . . They did not breakinto my house and steal it . . . they just cheated me. . . . They made me believe theywere honest . . . they offered me all kinds of joint ventures and at the end—theytook all I had and now I am left with nothing. . . . I know people cheat all overthe world . . . but I also know that in some places things are done in a differentway. In Israel I have invested in so many projects and I was never cheated. . . . Idid not do this with friends or family, I did it with people who came to mychurch . . . some were from my area but others came from other places . . . weonly met in church and still we had trust. . . . To tell you the truth . . . I have lostmy confidence because of what people did to me here. . . . If I want to survive,I have to forget things I learned outside. (Eben Ezra, phone conversation toLagos, 2006)




Dow

nloaded from


6. Implementing the entrepreneurial spirit:

estrangement and frustrations

In Israel I learned a new mentality, but here people are different. So I have tofind the way that is right for me but is also right here because I live herenow . . . and this gap creates a lot of frustrations. (Naana, Cape Coast, Ghana2005)

What happens when returning labor migrants attempt to maintain the spirit of entre-

preneurship in their local contexts? In their testimonies, Sub-Saharan African return

migrants tended to contrast the economic spirit they had acquired in Israel with the

local one. The distinction they make may seem exaggerated, yet, it is a central part of

their own experience of return. An emphasis on this contrast appeared every time our

interviewees described the difficulties of achieving economic success in their home

countries. As we have already seen in the end of the last section regarding the failure

to implement social trust, in their eyes, the entrepreneurial spirit is best implemented in

a social world where others share that spirit. When such a culture does not exist, this

implementation can easily fail.

The most important cultural clash that rose in the interviews was the clash between an

ethos that values the family and an ethos that values the individual. As we illustrated above,

the entrepreneurial spirit acquired in Israel includes a strong emphasis on the individual.

Such an emphasis is frequently rejected by the families of the returnees. Many migrants

were forced to give loans to their families even when they knew that they would not be paid

back. Charity, for example, had lived and worked in Israel for approximately five years,

before she was deported in 2003. Once back in Ghana, she resumed living in her family’s

compound. When asked by a family member for a loan, she lost her scant savings as this

was, in fact, a grant never to be paid back. When speaking about this ‘loan’, she stressed that

in Israel she learned that ‘if you take, you give back’. However, her family members had not

learnt that lesson: ‘They remained Ghanaians’.

In his study of local entrepreneurs in Ghana, Hart (1975) showed that the accumulation

of money, while aspired to by many, is in strong conflict with the cultural emphasis on

supporting others in the family and in the community. This conflict frequently led young

entrepreneurs to financial failure, as they were unable to prevent their families from taking

the surplus and spending it. As he shows, in refusing to share immediately what they have

‘these accumulators undermined the morality of the group’ (ibid: 28). The main way that

entrepreneurs were able to somehow resolve this conflict was by spreading a part of the

money on others, and at the same time respecting and upholding local customs.8 In spite

of the time passed since Hart’s study, it seems that this conflict still resonates. African

returned migrants find themselves in an intensified conflict, as they not only aspire

to accumulate money—they import a whole new way of being. Not only had most of

them not yet accumulated enough money to spend the surplus on others, the economic

practices and behaviors they adopted are viewed as contradicting and disrespecting local

customs.

In a somewhat paradoxical manner, return migrants’ social status may actually decline

because they make choices in keeping with the new entrepreneurial spirit, even though they




Dow

nloaded from


have achieved economic success. Upon return to Ghana in 2003, Harriet and her husband

bought a car and purchased a shop in the Kumasi market, selling cheap Chinese plastic

utensils for domestic use. Most of the family’s income comes from Harriet, who spends her

time singing and advancing her musical career, which grew out of singing in Israeli

churches. From a low wage earner with poor earning potential, Harriet has transformed

herself into a successful career woman. Still, even in light of this economic success, her

social status remains ambiguous. Harriet found that people could not understand her new

priorities and challenged the shift in her mindset:

Because we came back with just a regular car and the house we are building is notfinished, people don’t respect me so much . . . they say to us: boga, boga9 . . . somepeople who came back show all their new clothes and jewelry, they walk around soeveryone can see them. . . . They walk with so much gold on them that you can thinkthey have a gold store on themselves . . . but me, I’m different. . . . I learned from theIsraelis not to show off . . . In Israel I learned to be more modest, morehumble . . . (Harriet, Takradi and Kumasi, Ghana 2005)

Harriet expresses an economic worldview that clashes with local social patterns and

expectations. Because of this she feels that she does not receive respect and is regarded as

one who, on their return, has lost their way, a stranger (boga). This lack of respect is

expressed in moral judgments that are not limited to economic issues, questioning the

returned migrants’ standing as good community and family members. Pastor Ampadu

from Ghana lived in a nice house in a good neighborhood in Kumasi. When asked about his

house during the interview he answered that this is the house of his mother-in-law who is

currently in America, and added:

People here tell me it is not good that I don’t have my own house and that we live in ahouse that belongs to Amy’s mother. They say it brings problem in the family . . . .They say that I’m not a good husband, not a good man . . . . I tell them that she is inthe US and the house is empty and it does not make sense to pay rent, it is better tolive here and save money and when we have enough we will have our own house.(Pastor Ampadu, Kumasi, 2005)

The local reaction to Pastor Ampadu’s decision to live in the house of his mother-in-law

exposes how the implementation of the Israeli economic spirit can threaten central values

in the local communities. What seems like a simple economic decision to save money is in

fact a moral transgression that opposes the way a ‘good man’ or a ‘good husband’ should

behave, endangering traditional gender roles.

The tension between the desire for economic success and the wish for social recog-

nition is a part of a returned migrant’s experience. A graduate of the Ghana University

chemistry department, Naana lived for almost 18 years in Israel. Like most African

labor migrants, he made his living as a cleaner. During this period, Naana held a

number of leadership roles in the African labor migrant community, most notably as

co-founder of ‘The African Workers Union’. In 2005 he was deported by the Israeli

Immigration Administration. His family members, who had grown used to the regular

income that he sent them, quickly extracted from him the little money he had managed

to save, deserting him when he ran out of resources. Both ‘professions’ he had acquired

in Israel, house cleaning and politics, proved useless in Ghana. Eventually Naana, who




Dow

nloaded from


had originally left for Israel in order to escape poverty, found himself once again deeply

immersed in it:

Instead of thinking about my own future, I thought about my family back home . . . Iworked so hard to support my family back home . . . Instead of sending them moneyall the time, I should have thought more about myself and kept it with me . . . . I don’ttry to help others any more. I’m done with that. I live only for myself now. I havechanged. (Naana, Cape Coast, 2005)

Naana’s decision to ‘live only for himself’ has not yet been realized. Despite his clear

objections to following social expectations, such as external displays of social status, Naana

built a rather big house for himself, far beyond his means. When asked, ‘Why such a big

house?’ he replied, ‘You know, I didn’t really think it through . . . For all these years this was

my dream, so I wanted to do it. To do it well.’ In this sense, Naana fits into the archetype

of the returned African migrant who considers building a big house the ultimate realization

of the migration dream. Naana’s story illustrates the presence of several modalities of

thought and behavior in the same person. On the one hand, Naana embraces the indi-

vidualistic aspect of the Israeli entrepreneurial spirit. On the other hand, he holds strongly

to local communitarian values in which one builds a big house and increases his social

status.

Naana represents a group of returned migrants who claim to have learned a new eco-

nomic spirit in Israel, but on their return to Ghana still attempted to adhere to the

Ghanaian way, an attempt that resulted in personal and economic failures. Though we

cannot verify this, we would like to suggest that when facing the failure of the Ghanaian

way, the Israeli economic spirit acts as a cultural tool that helps Naana both to make

sense of his story of failure and to imagine a new way of acting in the future. If this is

correct, for Naana the choice of the Israeli model was not a proactive choice of what he

thought best, but instead a reaction to the failure he experienced of the Ghanaian model.

Regardless of the question whether Naana’s support of living ‘only for myself’ was proactive

or reactive, his words reveal his frustrations from the difficulty of implementing the

new values he embraced, difficulty that originates not only from the social world to

which he returned, but also from desires and hopes he internalized when growing up in

Ghana.

The hybridity Naana expresses is common in many African societies where people

develop successful capitalist businesses while maintaining and celebrating their traditional

family relationships. However, in Naana’s case, this hybridity is not accompanied by

harmonic coexistence, but instead produces tensions and frustrations. Such feelings of

frustration frequently accompany returned African migrants who do not yet know how

to reconcile the extreme neoliberal culture in which they lived for many years with their

local reality in Africa.

7. Conclusion

This study supports the growing interest in the unintended consequences of labor migra-

tion. Scholars who study the economic aspects of return labor migration tend to focus on




Dow

nloaded from


aspects such as money, professional skills or social networks. In this article, we join the

effort to bring culture back into migration studies by extending the view of the economic

process of return labor migration to include transformations of values and worldviews.

Drawing on Levitt’s (1998, 2001) notion of social remittances, we demonstrated that mi-

grants augment their entrepreneurial spirit and ambitions while abroad through a learning

process based on the observation of others, and they do this even in spite of their low social

position and menial jobs. This spirit is then remitted back to Africa where attempts are

made to implement it in their local social reality.

The spirit of entrepreneurship is not new to Africa. In fact, since the beginning of the

twentieth century, Christian churches have been pushing elements of what can be referred

to as a neoliberal self, and this includes a relatively capitalist economic spirit and work ethic.

Many times, the churches also embraced the common African communitarian approach

by advocating collective and cooperative entrepreneurship attempts (Borenstein 1977).

However, the kind of economic spirit that is being imported by African labor migrants

who spent years in neoliberal and capitalist states such as Israel is much more individualist

and frequently opposes a communitarian morality. As demonstrated in this article, African

labor migrants tend to criticize the African communitarian tendency and instead celebrate

individualism and self-reliance.

Implementation of these economic values can be successful as evidenced in the fact that

many of the subjects of this study did open small businesses. Still, even with financial

success, the process of implementing the entrepreneurial spirit is accompanied by tensions

and frustrations. Some return migrants find that the lack of a shared economic culture,

together with the clash between individualism and communitarianism, hinder their

attempt to succeed financially. Even those who succeed financially may experience a decline

in social status as they do not fulfill the social expectations of visible displays of wealth.

In addition, social and familial ties are often under pressure from the new mindset of the

return migrants, and this can cause tensions between the returning migrants and their

families. This finding is in line with those from other studies that show that the importation

of values and habits from first world countries carry both positive and negative influences

on local communities (e.g. Black 2004; Frank 2005). The tensions and frustrations that were

found in this research lead African labor migrants to formulate a conception of clear-cut

oppositions between the African economic spirit and the Israeli one, oppositions that in

reality are more ambiguous and blurred. Reacting to the social rejection and suspicion they

receive in their home communities, they utilize their newly acquired values to negatively

judge their families and community members, making a separation not only between

Israelis and Africans, but between us (the labor migrants who returned) and them (those

who did not migrate). The experiences of African return labor migrants teach us that

cultural hybrids are not easily attained. Though African labor migrants serve as important

agents that enhance and strengthen economic development in Africa, at the same time, they

themselves frequency experience cultural dissonance that leads to feelings of frustration

and estrangement.

Is the enhancement of the entrepreneurial spirit unique to the African labor migrant’s

experience in Israel? Though further comparative research is required to affirm this claim,

we would like to suggest that African labor migrants, especially those coming from rela-

tively high-status families, may arrive in Israel highly oriented toward gaining informal




Dow

nloaded from


training in what we have called the entrepreneurial spirit, as the opening of small businesses

is the main path to economic success in contemporary Africa. In addition, their relatively

high socioeconomic status, the fact that many are educated, and their ability to speak good

English, enable them to develop close ties with their Israeli employers. Further research will

reveal if processes similar to the one described in this article occur in the meeting between

African labor migrants and their employers in other locations that are similarly endowed

with an entrepreneurial spirit.

We end with the suggestion that the process discussed in this article takes place in a

transnational field where ideas, practices and people constantly circulate from one place

to another (Levitt and Glick Schiller 2004). The return migrants’ enduring connections

with their Israeli employers and friends open a channel through which cultural-economic

values and ideas continue to flow in both directions. The economic spirit that is remitted

back to Africa also affects local communities as they adopt or react against this new way of

living. Future research will shed light on the influence of this cultural remittance on

Africans’ motivations to migrate to first world countries and on the economic and social

practices of their communities in their home countries.

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank the very many people who opened their hearts and shared their much-

valued life experiences with us. This work could not have been done without their insights

and wisdom. The analysis and conclusions are our own. We thank Peggy Levitt for her

useful comments on an earlier draft. A previous version of this article was presented at the

2012 American Sociological Association Annual Meeting in Denver, Colorado.

Conflict of interest statement. None declared.

Notes

1. All names with � are pseudonyms. Some of the interviewees, mainly those who held

official roles in Israel within their own communities, specifically asked that their full

names appear. We have respected their request.

2. Which includes, for example, the yearly increase in working hours that comes at the

cost of time available for family and recreation which is inversely decreasing. Israelis

work 2,000 hours on average per year, which exceeds most of the developed European

countries and Canada and is identical to the USA.

3. For the history of labor migration to Israel see Bartram 2005; Willen 2007.

4. These figures were collected by various bodies, including the African Workers Union,

the General Federation of Trade in Israel, African church leaders and other NGOs.

5. From December 2005, a new wave of African migrants arrived in Israel, this time

through its lax border with Egypt. Their story is beyond the scope of the present article.

6. The age of our informants (following their return) was between 30 and 50. In addition,

several teenagers were interviewed. They grew up in Israel and upon their return were

between the ages 10 and 20.




Dow

nloaded from


7. There are also more communal, familial or state-driven versions of entrepreneurship.

Examples for non-individual based entrepreneurships include the Israeli kibbutz, first a

communal-based project and later a state-driven one (with the shift to neoliberalism

this form of community is today disappearing from Israel). Food cooperatives

and churches’ intiatives are communal entrepreneurships, and family businesses are

family-based ones.

8. Another path that some of Hart’s informants took was to convert to Christianity or

Islam, religions that are considered more supportive of individualism when compared

to local African religions. However, as this study shows, even though the African

returned migrants live in a Christian community, the conflict between a communitar-

ian perspective and an individual-oriented perspective exists.

9. The term boga seems to be Pidgin Twi for the city Hamburg in Germany, one of the

early and major destinations for Ghanaian migrants. Over the years it became a generic

term for all migrants who have returned home.

References

Adepoju, A. (1998) ‘Emigration Dynamics in Sub-Saharan Africa’, in Appleyard, R. (ed.),

Emigration Dynamics in Developing Countries, pp. 17–33. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Adler, S. (1985) ‘Emigration and Development in Algeria: Doubts and Dilemmas’, in

Rogers, R. (ed.), Guests Come to Stay: The Effects of European Labor Migration on

Sending and Receiving Countries, pp. 263–84. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Ammassari, S. and Black, R. (2001) Harnessing the Potential of Migration and Return to

Promote Development: Applying Concepts to West Africa. IOM Migration Research Series

(5). Geneva: IOM.

Bartram, D. (2005) International Labor Migration: Foreign Workers and Public Policy.

New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Bijaoui, I. (unpublished) ‘From Necessity to Business Entrepreneurship’: The Case of the

Songhai Center, Porto Novo, Benin’.

Black, R. (2004) Migration and Pro-Poor Policy in Africa; University of Sussex, Centre for

Migration Research.

—— and Castaldo, A. (2009) ‘Return Migration and Entrepreneurship in Ghana and Cote

d’Ivoire: The Role of Capital Transfers’, Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale

Geografie, 100/1: 44–58.

——, King, R. and Tiemoko, R. (2003) ‘Migration, Return and Small Enterprise

Development in Ghana: A Route out of Poverty?’ International Workshop on

Migration and Poverty in West Africa. University of Sussex, Centre for Migration

Research.

Borenstein, E. (1977) The Spirit of Development. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Constant, A. and Massey, D. S. (2002) ‘Return Migration by German Guestworkers:

Neoclassical versus New Economic Theories’, International Migration, 40: 5–38.

Davids, T. and Van Houte, M. (2008) ‘Remigration, Development and Mixed

Embeddedness: An Agenda for Qualitative Research’, International Journal on

Multicultural Societies, 10: 169–93.




Dow

nloaded from


Frank, R. (2005) ‘International Migration and Infant Health in Mexico’, Journal of

Immigrant Health, 7: 11–21.

Frese, M. and de Kruif, M. (2000) ‘Psychological Success Factors of Entrepreneurship in

Africa: A Selective Literature Review’, in Frese, M. (ed.), Success and Failure of

Microbusiness Owners in Africa: A Psychological Approach, pp. 1–30. London:

Quorum Books.

Gubert, F. and Nordman, C. J. (2008) Return Migration and Small Enterprise Development

in the Maghreb. MIREM Project Analytical Report.

Hart, K. (1975) ‘Swindler or Public Benefactor? The Entrepreneur in his Community’, in

Goody, J. (ed.), Changing Social Structure in Ghana, pp. 1–35. London: International

African Institute.

Hechavarria, D. M. and Reynolds, P. (2009) ‘Cultural Norms and Business Start-Ups: The

Impact of National Values on Opportunity and Necessity Entrepreneurs’, International

Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, 5/4: 417–37.

Hermele, K. (1997) ‘The Discourse on Migration and Development’, in Hammar, T.,

Brochmann, G., Tamas, K. and Faist, T. (eds), International Migration, Immobility

and Development, pp. 133–58. New York: Berg.

Heyle, B. S. (2001) ‘Ethnographic Interviewing’, in Atkinson, P. A., Delamont, S.,

Coffey, A., et al. (eds), Handbook of Ethnography, pp. 369–83. Thousand Oaks,

CA: Sage.

Kemp, A., Raijman, R., Resnik, J. and Gesser, S. (2000) ‘Contesting the Limits of Political

Participation: Latinos and Black African Migrant Workers in Israel’, Ethnic and Racial

Studies, 23: 94–119.

Levitt, P. (1998) ‘Social Remittances: Migration-Driven Local-Level Forms of Cultural

Diffusion’, International Migration Review, 32/4: 926–48.

—— (2001) The Transnational Villagers. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of

California Press.

—— and Lamba-Nieves, D. (2011) ‘Social Remittances Reconsidered’, Journal of Ethnic

and Migration Studies, 37/1: 1–22.

—— and Glick Schiller, N. (2004) ‘Conceptualizing Simultaneity: A Transnational Social

Field Perspective on Society’, International Migration Review, 38/3: 1002–39.

Lieblich, A., Tuval-Mashiach, R. and Zilber, T. (1998) Narrative Research: Reading,

Analysis, and Interpretation. New York: Sage.

Long, N. (1977) An Introduction to the Sociology of Rural Development. Boulder, CO:

Westview Press.

Massey, D., Arango, J., Hugo, G. et al. (1998) Worlds in Motion: Understanding

International Migration at the End of the Millennium. Oxford: Oxford University

Press.

Mawere, M. (2011) African Belief and Knowledge Systems: A Critical Perspective. Cameroon:

Langaa RPCIG.

Mbiti, J. (1970) African Religions and Philosophy. New York: Doubleday.

McCormick, B. and Wahba, J. (2001) ‘Overseas Work Experience, Savings and

Entrepreneurship amongst Return Migrants to LDCs’, Scottish Journal of Political

Economy, 48/2: 164–78.




Dow

nloaded from


Meyer, B. (2007) ‘Pentecostalism and Neo-Liberal Capitalism: Faith, Prosperity and Vision

in African Pentecostal-Charismatic Churches’, Journal for the Study of Religion, 20/2:

5–28.

Oke, M. (2005) ‘From an African Ontology to an African Epistemology: A Critique of J. S.

Mbiti on the Time Concept’, QUEST: An African Journal of Philosophy, 18: 25–36.

Ruben, R., Van Houte, M. and Davids, T. (2009) ‘What Determines the Embeddedness

of Forced-Return Migrants? Rethinking the Role of Pre- and Post-Return Assistance’,

International Migration Review, 43: 908–37.

Sabar, G. (2004) ‘African Christianity in the Jewish State: Adaptation, Accommodation

and Legitimization of Migrant Workers’ Churches: 1990�2003’, Journal of Religion in

Africa, 34/4: 407–37.

—— (2010) ‘Witchcraft and Concepts of Evil amongst African Migrant Workers in Israel’,

Canadian Journal of African Studies / Review Canadienne des Etudes Africaines, 44/1:

110–41.

Senor, D. and Singer, S. (2009) Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle.

New York: Hachette.

Simmel, G. (1950[1903]) ‘The Metropolis and Mental Life’, in The Sociology of Georg

Simmel, pp. 409�24. New York: Free Press.

Stark, O. (1991) ‘The New Economics of Labor Migration’, in The Migration of Labor,

pp. 22–31. Cambridge: Basil Blackwell.

Weber, M. (1946) From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. London: Routledge.

—— (1968) Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology. New York:

Bedminster Press.

—— (2002[1930]) The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. New York: Routledge.

Willen, S. (2007) Transnational Migration to Israel in Global Comparative Context.

Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

Wooldridge, A. (2010) ‘Schumpeter: Beyond the Start-up Nation’, The Economist (29 Dec

2010). <http://www.economist.com/node/17796932> accessed 1 March 2013.




Dow

nloaded from

http://www.economist.com/node/17796932


Enhancing the spirit of entrepreneurship: African labor migrants returning from Israel

Documents

Transcript of Enhancing the spirit of entrepreneurship: African labor migrants returning from Israel