Immigrant Entrepreneurship and the Opportunity Structure of the International Education Industry in Vancouver and Toronto

Abstract

This study is situated within a broad research field of immigrant entrepreneurship and pays particular attention to the international education businesses owned and operated by Korean immigrants. Seeking causal factors of disproportionately high rates of self-employment among immigrant groups, researchers in this field have developed two distinct streams of theoretical explanation. While social capital, class and ethnic resources are often identified as major factors of successful immigrant entrepreneurship, the political economic structure (i.e., a wide range of opportunity structures including business regulations and market conditions) is also seen as an important pre-condition for immigrant business ventures. Drawing upon the analytical framework of the mixed embeddedness model by Kloostermen and Rath (2001), this study examines how different institutional environments and the consumer demand base of the international education industry result in different opportunity structures for Korean immigrant entrepreneurs in Vancouver and Toronto, Canada.