This article assesses recent developments in the research and practice of migrant entrepreneurship by examining the powerful contribution that the perspective of ‘mixed embeddedness’ has provided to this field. We identify key themes emerging from mixed embeddedness, particularly in relation to the role of the institutional and market contexts, and highlight areas that could strengthen the perspective, such as (1) the role of regulation, (2) the incorporation of racist exclusion and (3) gendered structures of migration and labour market processes, (4) market ghettoisation and (5) greater sensitivity to historical context. We also consider the extent to which growing interest among practitioners in supporting migrant enterprise has been influenced by developments in the academic domain.

This paper synthesizes insights from new global data on the effectiveness of migration policies. It investigates the complex links between migration policies and migration trends to disentangle policy effects from structural migration determinants. The analysis challenges two central assumptions underpinning the popular idea that migration restrictions have failed to curb migration. First, post‐WWII global migration levels have not accelerated, but remained relatively stable while most shifts in migration patterns have been directional. Second, post‐WWII migration policies have generally liberalized despite political rhetoric suggesting the contrary. While migration policies are generally effective, “substitution effects” can limit their effectiveness, or even make them counterproductive, by geographically diverting migration, interrupting circulation, encouraging unauthorized migration, or prompting “now or never” migration surges. These effects expose fundamental policy dilemmas and highlight the importance of understanding the economic, social, and political trends that shape migration in sometimes counterintuitive, but powerful, ways that largely lie beyond the reach of migration policies.

Purpose-The purpose of this paper is to assess ways in which informality can be understood and reviews an emerging area of management scholarship. The origins and nature of informality are discussed with the aid of two different theoretical tools: "workplace sociology" (WS) and "mixed embeddedness" (ME). Design/methodology/approach-The analysis is grounded in empirical material reflecting different aspects of informality mainly within the ethnic economy, such as a study on the implementation of the National Minimum Wage regulations (Ram et al., 2007; Jones et al., 2004, 2006). Findings-The authors argue that the combination of WS and ME provides a valuable means of content and character of informality. It can also help to explaining variations and patterns within the informal economy, as well as understanding new forms of informality in the ethnic economy and beyond in "superdiverse" contexts. Originality/value-This paper bridges two different theoretical approaches to explain the interactions between the firm and state regulations, as well as the workplace relations between employer and employees.

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This article examines the patch-working strategies of migrant entrepreneurs as a form of social agency. 'Patch-working'-the reliance on supplementary forms of income to support business activityis often seen as a means of cushioning the financial vulnerability of small firms. However, the mechanisms and forms that patch-working takes tend to be overlooked. Evidence from 42 west Midlands' firms shows that, despite the highly constrained operating environment, the exercise of social agency can help to cushion against disadvantage and to rework their current conditions through patch-working. This allows for business growth, and even transformational growth in some cases, rather than sheer survival. Even so, our findings show that the agency of migrant entrepreneurs brings about only minor improvements in revenue and is certainly not capable of fundamentally changing either the nature of the sector or the structure of the labour market in which they are embedded.