An Overview on Immigrant Female Entrepreneurship in Italy

Abstract

Analysing the number of companies led by foreigners can be a useful parameter to measure the labour integration of immigrants in the countries of destination and their participation in the production system. In our country, non-Italian firms are a structurally significant reality. They appear to be characterized by a certain liveliness, often even greater than that of native companies, showing flexibility even during the pandemic, suffering its effects on a par with Italian enterprises but subsequently registering a new momentum. A further fact to highlight is the female component in the number of foreign-owned companies, which confirms the above-mentioned vitality. Thus, the aim of this paper is to carry out a literature review to investigate immigrant entrepreneurship with particular reference to female-owned activities, answering the following issues: RQ1. Which is the quantitative dimension of immigrant entrepreneurship businesses in Italy? RQ2. Which are the push factors of the phenomenon? RQ3. How many women are among immigrant entrepreneurs, i.e. which is the quantitative dimension of immigrant enterprises led by women? Specifically, the aim is to analyse the dimension and the reasons of the phenomenon in Italy and the presence of women in foreign entrepreneurship. Literature searches have been conducted, using a set of selected keywords and selected papers have been analysed in an attempt to identify main topics and results. This paper contributes to expand the literature on foreign entrepreneurship in Italy and immigrant female entrepreneurship, investigating the extent of the phenomenon, its motivations and possible implications and, furthermore, it aims to help the foreign entrepreneurship universe to become aware of the immigrant enterprise phenomenon.