Book-length study of black, Chinese, and Japanese self-employment in northern cities of the United States, 1880-1940, Self-employment is explained as a product of moral communities resulting from migration networks.

Ethnic Enterprise in America: Business and Welfare Among Chinese, Japanese and Blacks

The literature on ethnic entrepreneurship has focused on structural factors, group characteristics or a combination of both when explaining the entry and/or success of different ethnic groups in/to...

Ethnic entrepreneurship and the question of agency: the role of different forms of capital, and the relevance of social class

The article addresses how Vietnamese immigrant women developed an urban employment niche in the beauty industry, in manicuring. They are shown to have done so by creating a market for professional nail care, through the transformation of nailwork into what might be called McNails, entailing inexpensive, walk-in, impersonal service, in stand-alone salons, nationwide, and by making manicures and pedicures de riguer across class and racial strata. Vietnamese are shown to have simultaneously gained access to institutional means to surmount professional manicure credentializing barriers, and to have developed formal and informal ethnic networks that fueled their growing monopolization of jobs in the sector, to the exclusion of non-Vietnamese. The article also elucidates conditions contributing to the Vietnamese build-up and transformation of the niche, to the nation-wide formation of the niche and, most recently, to the transnationalization of the niche. It also extrapolates from the Vietnamese manicure experience propositions concerning the development, expansion, maintenance, and transnationalization of immigrant-formed labor market niches.

The Making and Transnationalization of an Ethnic Niche: Vietnamese Manicurists

Despite increased academic attention paid to migration flows in Europe, the gendered nature
of transnational migrant entrepreneurial journeys within the family business context remains
under-researched. We address this gap by investigating how transnational spaces enable
women to challenge the dominant ideas about their roles, and claim legitimacy by developing
branches of their family business abroad. Reporting extensive longitudinal evidence collected
over a seven-year period, we showcase four biographical narratives of women operating
transnational family businesses in the UK, which originated in Eastern Europe. Adopting this
novel longitudinal approach, we provide insights into how these transnational migrant women
entrepreneurs exercise individual agency to overcome structural constraints by developing
strategies which prioritize their own business aspirations without fully sacrificing their family
ties.

/pdf/transnational-migrant-entrepreneurship-gender-and-family-ju8ut27vsa.pdf

Transnational migrant entrepreneurship, gender and family business

Purpose




This paper aims to address the rural and gender gaps in the immigrant entrepreneurship literature by exploring the start-up stories of 18 female immigrants who currently run a business in northernmost Norway.




Design/methodology/approach




The paper is based on a qualitative fieldwork including business visits and in-depth interviews. The transcripts from the interviews were analysed using a constructivist grounded theory (CGT) approach.




Findings




Four modes of entry to entrepreneurship were identified: entrepreneurship as a way out of unemployment; entrepreneurship as a means to avoid underemployment, entrepreneurship as a means to live in a region of perceived attraction; and entrepreneurship as a preferred choice for women in satisfactory wage labour. In addition, the paper reveals the importance of family support and of spatial embeddedness among immigrant entrepreneurs living in a rural context.




Practical implications




This study notes that the modes of entry to rural immigrant entrepreneurship are diverse, but that they are often partly related to the pursuit of an initial feeling of belonging in the new region of settlement. Hence, developing the knowledge of how to not only attract but also retain and increase the feeling of local belonging of immigrants may be important for many rural regions in the Western world. This is because rural immigrants not only represent a much needed in-flow of younger people in a typically decreasing and ageing population but also entail cultural variation and job creation, thus contributing to place development.




Social implications




The paper argues for the importance of considering immigrant entrepreneurs as significant actors of rural development.




Originality/value




While immigrant entrepreneurship has emerged as an important field of study, it has been criticised for focusing predominantly on men and for neglecting contextual variations in the analysis. The rural context especially has been largely omitted. By focusing on female immigrants having established a business in a rural context, the paper adds to the literature, firstly, by highlighting the experiences of female immigrant entrepreneurs. Secondly, it reveals that rural immigrant entrepreneurship cannot be conceived in terms of “ethnic resources” or “enclave economy” that are often central explanatory dimensions in megacity studies. Thirdly, it argues for the importance of considering both the spatial as well as the family contexts in the author’s theoretical conceptualizations of the (immigrant) entrepreneurial start-up phase.

Immigrant entrepreneurship contextualised: Becoming a female migrant entrepreneur in rural Norway

Through an analysis of interview data and biographies of entrepreneurship, we demonstrate in this article the diverse paths to immigrant self-employment across a range of immigrant populations. We address the utilization of ethnic and occupational niches for establishing businesses and the resources that immigrant entrepreneurs draw upon as they move into self-employment. By drawing on the concept of biographical embeddedness and by emphasizing the agency of individual actors and their motivational and experiential resources, this article moves the analysis of immigrant entrepreneurs beyond the "disadvantage hypothesis" that has characterized much of the previous work on this subject.

Kristoffer E. Alstatt

Papers

THE AGENCY OF IMMIGRANT ENTREPRENEURS Biographies of the Self-Employed in Ethnic and Occupational Niches of the Urban Labor Market