Mixed embeddedness and new migrant enterprise in the UK

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).…”

“…Instead, they are part and parcel of a particular environment in the sense that they are aimed at exploiting (perceived) market opportunities within a concrete socio-economic, spatial, and regulatory context. The Mixed Embeddeness approach (Kloosterman, Rath, and van der Leun 1999;Kloosterman and Rath 2001;Rath 2001: Rusinovic 2006Kloosterman 2010;Ram et al 2013;Jones et al 2014) aims at explaining patterns of entrepreneurship by systematically linking the supply side of entrepreneurs with their specific set of resources, on the one hand, with the opportunity structure and markets on the other. It partly builds on the interactionist model of entrepreneurship proposed by |Waldinger, Ward (1990a, 1990b), but, borrowing from comparative political economy (Esping-Andersen 1990, 1999Hollingsworth and Boyer 1997;Whitley 1999) takes explicitly (national and local) differences in the institutional and regulatory context and its impact on the structure of opportunities and markets for businesses into account.…”

“…That is the archetype that cannot just be found in much of the academic literature on first-generation migrant entrepreneurship, but which has also been the image that has dominated much policy-making in the past decades (Kloosterman and Rath 2003;Panayiotopoulos 2006). Yet, new groups of migrants from less-developed countries have arrived and (urban)economies have undergone structural transformations and the question then becomes whether these newcomers have been able to exploit the opportunities offered by expanding urban economies (Kloosterman 2010;Ram et al 2013;Jones et al 2014). Below, we will explore this issue empirically by looking at the case of Ghanaian entrepreneurs in Dutch cities as they represent a group of newcomers and starting and running businesses in post-industrial urban environments.…”

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

“…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'.…”

“…Using data generated between 2012 and 2014 from a qualitative study of Eastern European migrants in the UK, we draw further attention to how migrants access, maintain and construct social networks in the host country (Ryan 2011), focusing on the flow of resources not only within social networks in the UK but also, crucially, across transnational spaces between the UK and Eastern Europe. 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).…”