Immigrant Entrepreneurs In A Changing Institutional Context

Immigrant entrepreneurs are known to be heterogeneous in terms of available resources and entrepreneurial outcomes. However, this heterogeneity, as well as immigrant entrepreneurs’ embeddedness in social networks and the institutional context of high-income welfare states such as Sweden, remains understudied. Sweden represents an interesting case as a popular immigration destination which liberalized its migration policy for entrepreneurs and changed other regulations, encouraging immigrant entrepreneurship after 2008. Theoretically, the dissertation contributes to the mixed embeddedness approach to immigrant entrepreneurship by considering three stages of the entrepreneurial process – entry, performance, and potential exit – in a changing institutional environment. Methodologically, the dissertation operationalizes the mixed embeddedness approach by studying these three stages – entry (propensity to start a business), performance (entrepreneurial incomes), and potential exit (duration in business) – among different categories of immigrants. Explanatory factors are drawn from three levels of analysis: institutional change (macro), social, ethnic and family networks (meso), and the individual’s human capital (micro). A range of statistical tools is used for empirical analyses: Difference-in-difference methods in combination with Coarsened Exact Matching and Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition are used to investigate the influence of institutional change on entrepreneurial entry and performance. Survival models based on Cox regression are applied to investigate the influence of social and family ties on the likelihood of entrepreneurial exit. A combination of clustering and association analysis allows heterogeneity to be approached via the categorization of immigrant entrepreneurs. Empirically, based on rich data from Swedish registers, the dissertation reveals that the propensity to start businesses in expanding ICT industries among labour immigrants was increased, and performance in terms of income among new immigrant entrepreneurs was improved after institutional change, compared to earlier. It also stresses that family networks mitigate a lack of other resources for refugee entrepreneurs, allowing them to stay in business longer. Two main categories of new immigrant entrepreneurs were distinguished in the overall heterogeneous population. The dissertation consists of four papers and an introductory chapter. Invandrarföretagare uppvisar stor heterogenitet när det gäller tillgängliga resurser och framgång i sitt företagande. Denna heterogenitet, liksom invandrarföretagens inbäddning i sociala nätverk och i den svenska välfärdsstatens institutionella kontext, är emellertid understuderad. Sverige utgör ett intressant fall eftersom det är ett land med relativt stor invandring som efter 2008 liberaliserade migrationspolitiken för företagare och på olika sätt uppmuntrade invandrares företagande. Teoretiskt bidrar avhandlingen till mixed embeddedness-perspektivet genom att analysera tre stadier i entreprenörsprocessen: uppstart, utveckling och eventuell avveckling, i förhållande till institutionell förändring. Mixed embeddedness operationaliseras i avhandlingen genom att olika kategorier invandrare studeras vid olika steg i entreprenörsprocessen; uppstart (benägenhet att starta ett företag), utveckling (företagarinkomster) samt eventuell avveckling (varaktighet i företaget) och genom att förklarande faktorer studeras på tre analysnivåer: institutionell förändring (makro), sociala, etniska och familjenätverk (meso) samt individens humankapital (mikro). En rad statistiska verktyg används för de empiriska analyserna; Difference-in-difference-metoder i kombination med Coarsened Exact Matching och Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition används för att undersöka hur institutionella förändringar påverkar uppstart och utveckling. Överlevnadsmodeller baserade på Cox-regression tillämpas för att undersöka hur sociala nätverk och familjeband påverkar sannolikheten för avveckling. Med en kombination av klusteranalys och associationsanalys undersöks mönster i heterogeniteten bland invandrarföretagarna genom kategorisering. Empiriskt, baserat på detaljerade data från svenska register, visar avhandlingen att benägenheten att starta verksamhet inom IKT-branschen ökade bland arbetskraftsinvandrare, samt att inkomsterna bland nya invandrarföretagare förbättrades efter en period av institutionell förändring. Avhandlingen visar även att familjenätverk motverkar bristen på andra resurser för företagare med flyktingbakgrund, vilket gör att de kan stanna i verksamheten längre. Två huvudkategorier går att urskilja i den heterogena gruppen av företagare. Avhandlingen är en sammanläggning av fyra artiklar och en inledande kappa.

This Special Issue aims to provide an extensive mapping of policies in the promotion of ethnic entrepreneurship in a number of countries. It is motivated by the desire of national and municipal Governments to create an environment conducive to setting up and developing SMEs in general and immigrant businesses in particular. Furthermore it also highlights how the third sector has also had a crucial role in the reinforcement of immigrant entrepreneurship, and provides indications of how best to address this issue at a Governmental level in the future.

Immigration is currently one of the most vivid challenges the European Union faces. Ways of introducing new migrants to society and economy pose significant challenges, thus some guidelines for the policy design towards migrations are in need. This book points out patterns of approaches leading to entrepreneurial activities, implemented by the immigrants from the Far East: China, Vietnam, South Korea, India, and Philippines. At these stage comparisons with other countries are both possible and necessary, as many countries all over the world face challenges connected with defining migration policies. From the studies included in the book, readers will gain first-hand knowledge about immigrant entrepreneurship in Poland against the Western European or USA background of similar processes described by researchers in other countries. The areas covered in the studies include the main reasons for starting new ventures and the sources of opportunities, processes of defining customers and factors influencing the choice between an ethnic and local business, immigrants' approaches to building market position, defining success and development, as well as the issues of cultural, institutional, legal and economic differences. The studies show that significant differences in entrepreneurial activities appear between the first and second generations of immigrants. They also depict how entrepreneurial activities help in assimilation processes, as well as in building ties between the immigrants and host societies. Moreover, the study will deepen the understanding of entrepreneurial activities of immigrants in countries that are traditionally considered to be less attractive targets for migration. Thus, the processes of migration will be not only better understood and described but will also allow to provide some guidelines both for policymakers and future researchers

This book adopts a multidisciplinary approach to the issue of “local liabilities”, drawing on close analysis of the case of Chinese migrants and the Italian industrial district of Prato in order to elucidate the problems, or liabilities, that derive from the separation between natives and immigrants in local systems of people and firms. Insights are offered from a variety of disciplines, including business and industrial economics, anthropology, and sociology, thereby providing a framework through which to view the problems and also identifying potential pathways for their evolution and resolution. The focus on local liabilities affords an original perspective on the nature of globalization and highlights salient aspects of native and immigrant entrepreneurship. Globalization not only creates "bridges" between distant places but also changes the face of businesses and socioeconomic systems at the local level, where local liabilities may emerge when two or more separate communities (of persons and firms) exist. The greater the separation between the communities, the greater the local liabilities. In offering diverse perspectives on this relatively neglected aspect of globalization, the book will be of interest to a wide readership.

Transnational and Immigrant Entrepreneurship in a Globalized World brings together leading international scholars from a cross-disciplinary basis to examine the economic, social, regulatory, technological, and theoretical issues related to the impact of transnational entrepreneurs on business and economic development.

Externally-promoted institutional reform, even when nominally accepted by developing country governments, often fails to deliver lasting change. Diasporans-immigrants who still feel a connection to their country of origin-may offer an In-Between Advantage for institutional reform, which links problem understanding with potential solutions, and encompasses vision, impact, operational, and psycho-social advantages. Individuals with entrepreneurial characteristics can catalyzing institutional reform. Diasporans may have particular advantages for entrepreneurship, as they live both psychologically and materially between the place of origin they left and the new destination they have embraced. Their entrepreneurial characteristics may be accidental, cultivated through the migration and diaspora experience, or innate to individuals' personalities. This book articulates the diaspora institutional entrepreneur In-Between Advantage, proposes a model for understanding the characteristics and motivational influences of entrepreneurs generally and how they apply to diaspora entrepreneurs in particular, and presents a staged model of institutional entrepreneur actions. I test these frameworks through case narratives of social institutional reform in Egypt, economic institutional reform in Ethiopia, and political institutional reform in Chad. In addition to identifying policy implications, this book makes important theoretical contributions in three areas. First, it builds on existing and emerging critiques of international development assistance that articulate prescriptions related to alternative theories of change. Second, it fills an important gap in the literature by focusing squarely on the role of agency in institutional reform processes while still accounting for organizational systems and socio-political contexts. In doing so, it integrates a more expansive view of entrepreneurism into extant understandings of institutional entrepreneurism, and it sheds light on what happens in the frequently-invoked black box of agency. Third, it demonstrates the fallacy of many theoretical frameworks that seek to order institutional change processes into neatly definable linear stages.

In the past few years, a considerable number of immigrants have established their own businesses. In doing so, they have contributed in many ways to the economic development of American and European metropolitan areas. Some businesses have been incorporated into the mainstream, while others have stayed on the economic fringes and got engaged in the informal economy. The starting point of this book is that a proper understanding of these businesses is served by focusing on the embeddedness of immigrant businesses in their economic, politico-institutional and social environments from a multi-disciplinary perspective rather than confining the attention to ethnic-cultural or economic sociological aspects only.