A Market Constantly Changing: On the Return Migrant Entrepreneurs’ Use of Human and Social Capital to Navigate Changes of the Operating Environment

Recent estimates indicate that about one in four migrants returning to their origin countries invest in business ventures or plan to do so in the future. The current literature unfolds how human capital, social networks, or contextual conditions are used by returnees for their business endeavours. However, the extant scholarship does not consider the constant changes in the wider institutional setting in which returnees’ businesses operate and how they navigate them. The study draws on 50 interviews with traders of second-hand cars imported in Romania from other EU countries and it highlights changes mentioned by the respondents in relation to the demand for used cars and competition among entrepreneurs in the origin country, supply of used cars in the destination country and changes in the transit system at the third country level. To tackle down these changes, the returnees used their transnational social capital, both bonding and bridging ties located in Romania and abroad, and their previous education and work experience.