Francesca Marchetta

 

Biographical Note

 

Francesca Marchetta was born in Palermo in 1980, she graduated in Political Science at the University of Florence in 2003, and she obtained a Master in Immigration, Asylum and Citizenship at the University of Palermo in 2004. She was a visiting researcher at the ISSER (Institute of Statistical, Social & Economic Research) in Accra, and at the University of Development Studies, in Tamale (Ghana) in 2007.

She obtained her Ph.D. in Development Economics at the University of Florence in 2008, with a dissertation on Livelihood Strategies of Rural Population in Northern Ghana, supervised by Prof. Donato Romano.

In 2009, she collaborated as a research assistant with Prof. Frank Ellis at the University of East Anglia, working on a project on Social Protection in Sub Saharan Africa, and as a Tutor of the Economics Module of the International Master in “Management of Development” at the International Training Center of the ILO in Turin.

She is part of the team of experts for the study on Labor Markets Performances and Migration Flows in Arab Mediterranean Countries, co-financed by the European Commission.

 

Research Interests

Her research interests include economic migration, the relationships between migration and development, the role of small and medium enterprises in the economic development, households’ livelihood strategies and social protection. At the EUI, she is going to collaborate with the CARIM research group and she will develop a project on return migration and entrepreneurship in Egypt.  

 

Born to be Alive? Return Migration and the Survival of Egyptian MSEs

MSEs in Egypt are extremely vulnerable, and the establishment of a new entrepreneurial activity may be of little significance if this is not going to last. The main research question of this work is: do the MSEs run by Egyptian returnees differ from the other MSEs with respect to their chances of survival, their evolution and sustainability over time?

Returnees may be better able to overcome the difficulties faced by MSEs, as they could draw on their foreign savings not only to finance the initial capital investment, but also to reduce the vulnerability of their enterprises in the face of adverse demand shocks.

The econometric analysis draws the data from the Egypt Labour Market Panel Survey 2006, collected by the Economic Research Forum.

The quantitative analyses could also be matched by qualitative information drawn from interviews with a selected group of returnee entrepreneurs in the Greater Cairo region.

 

Recent Publications

 

“The impact of migration on labour markets in Arab Mediterranean Countries – A bibliographical review”, 2009, background paper for the report “Labour Market Performance and Migration Flows in Arab Mediterranean Countries – A Regional Perspective”, RSCAS/EUI, Florence.

“Contemporary migratory processes: perceptions and reality”, co-authored with Simone Bertoli, Il Ponte – Rivista Italiana di Economia e Politica, September 2009 (in Italian).

 “Human development and clusters of Small and Medium Enterprises”, 2009, co-authored with Marco Bellandi and Mario Biggeri, forthcoming in M. Biggeri and G. Canitano (eds.), Theory and Policy of Aid Development – vol.2, Franco Angeli, Milano (in Italian).

“Migration and non farm activities as income diversification strategies: the case of Northern Ghana”, DSE Working Paper 16/08, available via the web at: http://www.dse.unifi.it/CMpro-p-p-22-page.html|

“On the Move - Livelihood strategies and Income Diversification in Rural Northern Ghana”, 2008, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Florence.