Migrant Entrepreneurship Enablers: From Chance Encounters to Community Development

Abstract

This article explores the underexamined role of personal enablers in migrant entrepreneurship. Drawing on timeline interviews, the study relays the importance of entrepreneur enablers in migrants’ business endeavours over time, ranging from coincidental and ephemeral encounters to the development of supportive communities. In the absence of accessible business support structures, the role of chance in migrants’ entrepreneurial trajectories increases, leading migrants to become self-employed, often against the grain of their own expectations or those of their inner circle of contacts or the wider society. The timeline interviews are a helpful method to capture how particular people, in conjunction with broader societal and smaller personal developments, influence entrepreneurial choices and progression over time. The study adds a dynamic and agentic perspective to migrant entrepreneurship literature underlining the importance of personal enablers to support migrant entrepreneurial developments over time.

Gurkha Warriors as Entrepreneurs in Britain: A Social Anchoring Lens on Martial Heritage and Migrant Enterprises

“…Using the notion of social anchoring (Grzymala-Kazlowska, 2016), this article has delineated emerging Gurkha enterprises in Britain and their attempts to deploy different anchors which serve as psycho-social resources to differentiate them from those of other migrant entrepreneurs. Gurkha entrepreneurs are not an exception in comparison with other ethnic and migrant entrepreneurs, as discussed in prior work (Berntsen et al, 2021;Cederberg and Villares-Varela, 2019;Jones et al, 2014;Villares-Varela et al, 2018), and operate on a continuum that involves a simultaneous ricocheting between structural and material constraints, as many have pensions that are well below the level required to maintain a minimum standard of living in Britain. However, their military heritage has provided these migrant entrepreneurs with important anchors and psycho-social resources with which to exercise their agency and establish a foothold in the host society.…”

“…This article shows how psycho-social resources, by embedding different forms of anchors, trigger entrepreneurs’ social agency to overcome structural constraints, locate themselves within host societies and exercise agency to build on their footholds. While the marginality of immigrant enterprises has been widely discussed, only limited attempts have been made to delineate the variability of outcomes experienced by migrant entrepreneurs from the perspective of social context and agency (Berntsen et al, 2021; Cederberg and Villares-Varela, 2019; Kloosterman, 2010; Ram et al, 2008; Vershinina et al, 2011). Despite facing similar structural constraints, differences in agential capacities in terms of deploying different anchors can cause variations between migrant enterprises (Villares-Varela et al, 2018).…”

“…Their entrepreneurial trajectory has therefore been largely incremental, being inspired by other ethnic entrepreneurs and enablers in some instances. Although prior work has discussed migrant networks, support structures and the pooling of resources (Berntsen et al, 2021; Villares-Varela et al, 2018), Gurkha entrepreneurs are in many instances distinct in terms of their access to resources and use of social networks. This is evident in the way they exercise their agency by pooling resources through dhukuties and their close ties with numbaries.…”

“…Villares-Varela et al (2018) discuss different forms of ‘patch-working’ strategies, including holding multiple jobs and activities and setting up a portfolio of businesses to help them survive and grow. Berntsen et al (2021) demonstrate the role that different personal enablers have played in triggering the agency of migrant entrepreneurs for whom entrepreneurship was once regarded as a distant goal. Few studies, however, have explored the role played by migrants’ psycho-social resources in combination with their agency or theorised about the ways that such resources are implicated in shaping entrepreneurial trajectories.…”

“…However, the experiences and trajectories of entrepreneurs have been distinctly heterogeneous across migrant groups, as each group is exposed to different opportunity structures, enablers and constraints (Berntsen et al, 2021; Brynin et al, 2019; Kloosterman, 2010; Ram et al, 2008). Portes and Martinez (2020) refute the claim that ethnic minority migrants are subject to occupational and economic subordination as a result of their businesses being labelled as, and trapped in, ‘ethnic enclaves’.…”