Pandemic transformations in migrant spaces: Migrant entrepreneurship between super-digitalization and the new precarity.

Abstract

The Covid‐19 pandemic has brought about new patterns in labour market activities, including greater frequency, intensity and sectoral diversification of technology‐mediated online work (super‐digitalization). The development of online professional activities, accelerated by the pandemic, has a profound influence on migrant entrepreneurship in many dimensions. While the phenomenon also concerns the native population and is not limited to foreigners, in the case of migrant entrepreneurs it has additional unique meanings and consequences, resulting from a greater significance of mobility for migrants and its restriction during the pandemic. The analysis discusses new phenomena, such as the emergence of pandemic digital nomads and the development of migrant business ventures characterized by a de‐ethnicized approach to customers. The theoretical framework for this analysis is the concept of super‐digitalization of professional activities as a privilege. Digitalization is not available to everyone, but it affects everyone; it also has consequences for offline migrant entrepreneurs by creating and enhancing new mechanisms of exclusion. The article emphasizes the difference between super‐digitalization and digitalization, which result in different outcomes for migrant entrepreneurs. The analysis is based on in‐depth interviews with 53 Polish migrant entrepreneurs in the United Kingdom.