Immigrant Entrepreneurship

A provocative look at the remarkable contributions of high-skill immigrant entrepreneurs in America Both a revelation and a call-to-action, Immigrant, Inc. explores the uncommon skill and drive of America's new immigrants and their knack for innovation and entrepreneurship. From the techies who created icons of the new economy-Intel, Google, eBay and Sun Microsystems-to the young engineers tinkering with solar power and next-generation car batteries, immigrants have proven themselves to be America's competitive advantage. With a focus on legal immigrants and their odyssey from homeland to start-up, this unique book Explores the psyche, cultural nuances, skills, and business strategies that help immigrants achieve remarkable success Explains how immigrants will create the American jobs of the future-if we let them Whether you are a CEO, a civic leader, or an entrepreneur yourself, Immigrant, Inc. warns of the peril of anti-immigrant attitudes and a hostile immigration process. It also explains how any American can tap their "inner immigrant" to transform their lives and their companies. Written by an immigration lawyer who represents immigrant entrepreneurs and a journalist who specializes in international culture, the authors have a front-row seat to this phenomenon, offering a fascinating glimpse into the mindset of the most persistent entrepreneurs of the era.

A decade in preparation, Immigrant Entrepreneurs offers the most comprehensive case study ever completed of the causes and consequences of immigrant business ownership. Koreans are the most entrepreneurial of America's new immigrants. By the mid-1970s Americans had already become aware that Korean immigrants were opening, buying, and operating numerous business enterprises in major cities. When Koreans flourished in small business, Americans wanted to know how immigrants could find lucrative business opportunities where native-born Americans could not. Somewhat later, when Korean-black conflicts surfaced in a number of cities, Americans also began to fear the implications for intergroup relations of immigrant entrepreneurs who start in the middle rather than at the bottom of the social and economic hierarchy. Nowhere was immigrant enterprise more obvious or impressive than in Los Angeles, the world's largest Korean settlement outside of Korea and America's premier city of small business. Analyzing both the short-run and the long-run causes of Korean entrepreneurship, the authors explain why the Koreans could find, acquire, and operate small business firms more easily than could native-born residents. They also provide a context for distinguishing clashes of culture and clashes of interest which cause black-Korean tensions in cities, and for framing effective policies to minimize the tensions.

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.

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.

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 draws on evidence from global cities around the world and explores various dimensions of immigrant entrepreneurship and urban development. It provides a substantive contribution to the existing literature in several ways. First of all, it pursues a comparative approach, with case studies from both the global north and global south, so as to broaden the theoretical framework in this area especially as pertinent to emerging economies. Second, it covers multiple scales, from local community place-making, to urban contexts of reception, to transnational networks and connections. Third, it combines approaches and research methods from numerous disciplines, investigating entry dynamics, trends and patterns, business performance, challenges, and the impact of immigrant entrepreneurship in urban areas. Finally, it pays particular attention to current international experiences regarding urban policies on immigrant entrepreneurship. Given its scope, the book will be an enlightening read for anyone interested in immigration, entrepreneurship and urban development issues around the globe. As global cities around the world continue to attract both domestic migrants and international migrants to their bustling metropolises, immigrant entrepreneurship is emerging as an important urban phenomenon that calls for careful examination. From Chinatown in New York, to Silicon Valley in San Francisco, to Little Africa in Guangzhou, immigrant-owned businesses are not only changing the business landscape in their host communities, but also transforming the spatial, economic, social, and cultural dynamics of cities and regions.

A provocative look at the remarkable contributions of high-skill immigrant entrepreneurs in America Both a revelation and a call-to-action, Immigrant, Inc. explores the uncommon skill and drive of America's new immigrants and their knack for innovation and entrepreneurship. From the techies who created icons of the new economy-Intel, Google, eBay and Sun Microsystems-to the young engineers tinkering with solar power and next-generation car batteries, immigrants have proven themselves to be America's competitive advantage. With a focus on legal immigrants and their odyssey from homeland to start-up, this unique book Explores the psyche, cultural nuances, skills, and business strategies that help immigrants achieve remarkable success Explains how immigrants will create the American jobs of the future-if we let them Whether you are a CEO, a civic leader, or an entrepreneur yourself, Immigrant, Inc. warns of the peril of anti-immigrant attitudes and a hostile immigration process. It also explains how any American can tap their "inner immigrant" to transform their lives and their companies. Written by an immigration lawyer who represents immigrant entrepreneurs and a journalist who specializes in international culture, the authors have a front-row seat to this phenomenon, offering a fascinating glimpse into the mindset of the most persistent entrepreneurs of the era.