Immigrant Entrepreneurship and the Opportunity Structure of the International Education Industry in Vancouver and Toronto

Abstract

This study is situated within a broad research field of immigrant entrepreneurship and pays particular attention to the international education businesses owned and operated by Korean immigrants. Seeking causal factors of disproportionately high rates of self-employment among immigrant groups, researchers in this field have developed two distinct streams of theoretical explanation. While social capital, class and ethnic resources are often identified as major factors of successful immigrant entrepreneurship, the political economic structure (i.e., a wide range of opportunity structures including business regulations and market conditions) is also seen as an important precondition for immigrant business ventures. Drawing upon the analytical framework of the mixed embeddedness model by Kloostermen and Rath (2001), this study examines how different institutional environments and the consumer demand base of the international education industry result in different opportunity structures for Korean immigrant entrepreneurs in Vancouver and Toronto, Canada.

Development of Bangladeshi immigrant entrepreneurship in Canada

“…In addition to traditional immigrant groups, we notice a surge of research on business class immigrants in recent decades (for details, see Kwak and Hiebert, 2010; Hiebert, 2002; Ley, 2006, 2003; Wong and Ng, 1998). We also find some recent studies that focused on different aspects of new immigrant entrepreneurship which document the experiences of Koreans, Indians, Pakistanis, Chinese and different African immigrant groups (Agrawal, 2016; Golob and Giles, 2017; Lin and Tao, 2012; Lo and Teixeira, 2015; Kwak, 2013; Perreault et al., 2007; Kariv et al., 2009; Malik et al., 2017; Vissak and Zhang, 2014; Saul and Pelican, 2014).…”

Immigrant entrepreneurs in a changing institutional context : a mixed embeddedness approach

“…The macro-level institutional regulation, such as the liberalization of migration rules, was difficult to capture with the available data, but a proxy concerning the reason for a residence permit and time-related research design allow for the conclusion that the lower entry barriers attract more innovative immigrant entrepreneurs to the post-industrial growing sector (Paper B). This result is in line with the findings of Kwak (2013) that the entrepreneurial activities of Korean immigrants in Canada increased in the educational industry after the visa-free agreement was concluded between South Korea and Canada.…”

Programming for Immigrant Women in Canada: Is Entrepreneurship Neglected?

“…The business or “investor” immigrant class is specifically targeted at investors who would set up new business or invest in existing ones in Canada (Hiebert, 2003; Ley, 2006). A number of studies have explored the trajectories of immigrant entrepreneurs in Canada, not only from the perspectives of those who immigrated to Canada through the investor category, but also immigrant‐owned businesses in general have been the focus of several studies (Bauder, 2008; Kariv, et al, 2009; Kwak, 2013; Neville et al, 2014; Sui, Morgan and Baum, 2015; Morgan, Sui and Baum, 2018). Bauder examines whether attitude towards entrepreneurship is shaped by an immigrant’s ethnic origin, employment status at place of settlement or the immigration category under which the immigrant came to Canada.…”

“…The author argues that this finding supports the mixed embeddedness theory, which states that government regulations and overall institutional environment of the host country play more significant role in the performance of immigrants’ businesses than do peculiar attributes of the immigrant. In effect, policies and programmes designed to assist immigrants to successfully navigate the Canadian business environment, as well as the opportunity set available to immigrants in the host community, are potentially better predictors of business success than the ethnic background of the immigrant or the immigration category under which the immigrant entered Canada (Kloosterman and Rath, 2001; Kloosterman, 2010; Kwak, 2013).…”