Shifting landscapes of immigrant entrepreneurship

Abstract

Summary Immigrant entrepreneurship still comprises smalls stores confined to the lower segment of markets. Nowadays, however, immigrant entrepreneurs are becoming visible also in high-value activities which characterise advanced urban economies. This transformation was partly the result of the increasing level of educational attainment of many immigrants and members of ethnic minorities, but it was also driven by the shifts in the structure from industrial to post-industrial economies, which occurred in the last two decades. The potential of self-employment to open up avenues of upward social mobility has, thus, further increased. The qualitative shift from low-value to high-value added business occurring among parts of the immigrant population, moreover, has emphasised the potential significance of immigrant entrepreneurs for the national and, in particular, the local economies in the countries of settlement. Given its strategic importance for, on one hand, the integration of immigrants in the countries of settlement, and, on the other, the potentially significant contribution to the economies of these countries, immigrant entrepreneurship scores high on policy makers’ agendas across the OECD member states. The chapter presents a framework to analyse immigrant entrepreneurship and its potential contribution to immigrants’ social incorporation based on the mixed embeddedness approach, which stresses the interplay between opportunities for business, on the one hand, and immigrant entrepreneurs and their resources on the other. It, then, explores how regulation may affect markets and, therefore, opportunities. Regulation come in different forms, in complex packages that define what is “possible” in a market. It is, thus, not just a matter of repression and constraining but also of enabling. From this perspective, the chapter gives also a brief overview of the main characteristics of the actual policy measures implemented to strengthen immigrant entrepreneurship. The actual policies implemented in order to promote immigrant entrepreneurship focus mainly on the agency of the entrepreneur, rather than the opportunity structure. Moreover, they seem to be mostly geared to the nascent entrepreneurs and to a much lesser extent to the already established immigrant and ethnic entrepreneurs. A new set of policies specifically aimed at immigrant entrepreneurs in vacancy-chain markets and, at the same time, a revision of the regulations (national and local; formal and informal) that