Forms of capital, mixed embeddedness and Somali enterprise

Abstract

What form is small business activity taking among new migrants in the UK? This question is addressed by examining the case of Somalis in the English city of Leicester.We apply a novel synthesis of the Nee and Sanders' (2001) `forms of capital' model with the `mixed embeddedness' approach (Rath, 2000) to enterprises established by newly arrived immigrant communities, combining agency and structure perspectives. Data are drawn from business-owners (and workers) themselves, rather than community representatives. Face-to-face in-depth interviews were held with 25 business owners and 25 employees/`helpers', supplemented by 3 focus group encounters with different segments of the Somali business population.The findings indicate that a reliance solely on social capital explanations is not sufficient. An adequate understanding of business dynamics requires an appreciation of how Somalis mobilize different forms of capital within a given political, social and economic context.

Super-diverse migrants—similar trajectories? Ghanaian entrepreneurship in the Netherlands seen from a Mixed Embeddedness perspective

“…These new groups may display rather different characteristics compared to the more established ones thereby adding to the notion of 'superdiversity' as proposed by Vertovec (2007). From our perspective, these different characteristics may also translate into different profiles of self-employment of these newcomers (Ram, Theodorakopoulos, and Jones 2008;Jones et al 2014).…”

Leveraging symbolic capital: the use of blat networks across transnational spaces

“…One outcome of recognizing that both structure and agency are important has been the emergence of a mixed embeddedness approach (Kloosterman 2010;Kloosterman et al 1999) to understanding migrant forms of entrepreneurship (Ram et al 2008;) that takes the embeddedness of migrant entrepreneurs within co-ethnic networks into account and seeks to contextualize them within broader social, political and economic spaces within the host country (Ram et al 2008). This approach focuses on the many difficulties that migrant entrepreneurs face in the host country (such as access to finance and training) as necessarily part of the social and political context of the host country (Ram et al 2008).…”

“…This approach focuses on the many difficulties that migrant entrepreneurs face in the host country (such as access to finance and training) as necessarily part of the social and political context of the host country (Ram et al 2008). As such, the mixed embeddedness approach stresses the need to focus not only on ethnic strategies but also on personal strategies within specific opportunity structures, markets and regulatory environments.…”

“…However, Sepulveda et al (2011) argue that many have overstated the importance of social capital as a way of facilitating migrant entrepreneurial business operations. Related to this point, Ram et al (2008) and Jones et al (2014) have emphasized how social capital can have negative as well as positive effects on migrant populations. In their study of Somalis in Leicester, Ram et al (2008) found that the social capital that these Somalis utilized in their business operations was a two-way resource, on the one hand to provide critical forms of economic capital to assist in the start-up of business ventures in the UK, while at the same time providing substantial amounts of money to Somali family and friends back 'home'.…”

“…Over the past decade, increasing numbers of 'new' migrants have arrived in the UK (Jones et al 2014) because of the rise in refugees and asylum seekers from war-torn countries (Edwards et al 2016), as well as migration from the new EU member states (Ciupijus 2011;Khattab and Fox 2016) and other European countries such as the former Soviet states of Ukraine, Russia, Belarus and Moldova. Despite the growth of 'new' migrant communities in the UK, forming part of the 'age of super-diversity' (Meissner and Vertovec 2015;Vertovec 2007Vertovec , 2014, such groups have rarely figured in contemporary debates on self-employment and/or entrepreneurship, other than in a few notable studies (Barrett and Vershinina 2017;Edwards et al 2016;Ram et al 2008). …”