Ethnic enclaves or middleman minority? Regional patterns of ethnic minority entrepreneurship in Britain

Abstract

In public debate higher levels of self-employment among some ethnic communities are often celebrated as a manifestation of success. Regional economic development is a long-standing issue in British public policy, with the South-Eastern regions of England enjoying greater long-run prosperity than Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the other parts of England. The regional distribution of five entrepreneurial minorities in England and Wales is described. We test hypotheses derived from the middleman minority theory and the ethnic enclave model and find that self-employment in these groups is inversely related to minority share in the regional economically active population. The sectoral diversity of minority enterprises is positively related to their share in the regional economically active population.