Abstract
This article draws on data from qualitative interviews with ethnic enclave and ethnic economy business entrepreneurs from Chinese, Bangladeshi and Turkish-speaking communities in London. Routes into business and worker recruitment practices are explored, demonstrating the centrality of social capital in the form of family and other social networks within these processes. The article investigates what employers consider the desirable characteristics of workers: trust, kinship, gender, social networks, language compatibility and the needs of the business intersect with racialised notions of workers’ strengths and characteristics. Finally, we consider changing practices in relation to the employment of undocumented migrants, in the context of an increasingly punitive legislative regime. The complex and variable impact of policy alongside the ways in which other obligations and positions outweigh the fear and risks of sanctions associated with non-compliance is revealed.
Highlights
This article draws on data from qualitative interviews with ethnic enclave and ethnic economy business entrepreneurs from Chinese, Bangladeshi and Turkish-speaking communities in London
Compared to undocumented migrant workers, relatively little is known about migrant employers who own the types of businesses that are associated with informal employment practices and represent the kinds of sites where undocumented migrants and semicompliant workers, such as asylum seekers working in breach of their asylum claim or students working longer hours than stipulated in their visas, can seek and find work (Lucas and Mansfield, 2010; Ruhs and Anderson, 2006)
The term ‘ethnic enclave’ derives from the North American sociological literature and refers to enterprises that serve their own ethnic market and/or the general population. Their basic characteristic is that the enterprise is minority ethnic owned and that a significant proportion of the labour force is composed of migrant workers from the same ethnic group (Portes, 1981: 290–1)
Summary
This article draws on data from qualitative interviews with ethnic enclave and ethnic economy business entrepreneurs from Chinese, Bangladeshi and Turkish-speaking communities in London. Ethnic enclave businesses, migrant entrepreneurs, recruitment, social networks, undocumented migrants Especially undocumented migrants, rely on the informal economy for livelihoods and this dependency can be the context that frames work relations (see Bloch, 2013).
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