The Mediterranean countries, with their specific sociocultural identities, are facing a process of huge and wider integration due to immigration of laborers from other countries. Among the integration mechanisms, migration, especially of young people, represents a crucial tool for changing the Euro-Mediterranean societies and a means of transferring and mobilizing resources across national boundaries. From the sending countries' perspective, migration experience in Europe, especially for young people that face problems of unemployment and difficulties in acquiring competences and skills at home, offers a unique opportunity of training, of knowledge transfer and brain circulation. Migration in Europe becomes a development tool when financial and social remittances (namely ideas, practices, identities) sent back home by the migrants have significant effect in transforming economies, lives and values of recipient countries. For the host countries temporary migrants can be beneficial to solve market imbalances and to provide examples of different ways of conducting business activities. The paper aims at providing an overview of actual flows of young people across the Mediterranean with particular relevance to human capital (skills and abilities) and entrepreneurial functions. Some evidence will be drawn from returnees of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries as they provide interesting examples of these dynamics.

The recent debate on international migration management across Mediterranean borders puts the emphasis on the necessity to strengthen the synergies between migration and development and see the southern shore asking the European countries to cooperate in order to promote economic and social development of sending countries by facilitating remittances and circular movements. Drawing on the potential role of the private sector and of the local institutions of migrants' countries for their successful reintegration together with the promotion of training mechanisms through working experiences in northern countries are among the most relevant issues. For the sending countries of the Euro-Mediterranean (Euro-Med) area in fact migration represents an alternative way of acquiring additional skills, competences and information that, once back, can reduce the perception of risks and uncertainty linked to the entrepreneurial activities and promote economic projects of returnees. This is of particular relevance for the Middle East and North Africa Mediterranean (Med-MENA) countries whose economies are not always `well-behaving' economies but rather show fragmentation of economic activities and do not have easy access to market information and credit. For the hosting countries of the European side, temporary migration can also be beneficial as it can help labor shortages in certain sectors and can increase labor mobility. For what concern the flows of entrepreneurial functions, migrants' private businesses can be an alternative model for conducting economic activities, based on different values as solidarity and informal mechanisms. These dynamics are more evident in the case of young migrants as they are not only more educated with respect to older generation, but their propensity to learn, to acquire and to internalize new practices and ideas are also much higher.

Given that, nowadays, the population of young migrants in the Euro-Med area has become consistent, the aim of this paper is to investigate the composition of such flows, their process of integration in hosting countries and reintegration in sending economies and their role in promoting integration mechanisms through entrepreneurship creation.

Entrepreneurship Development Journal, sociocultural Identities, Mobilizing Resources, Middle East and North Africa, MENA, International Migration Management, Economic Activities, Entrepreneurial Functions,, Economic Growth, Entrepreneurial Ideas, Economic Diversification.