Taiwanese Immigrant Entrepreneurs in Canada and Transnational Social Space

Abstract

AbstractThis article explores the migration of Taiwanese immigrant entrepreneurs to Canada and their transnationalism. Their presence in Canada is documented and described with statistical data on their demographic characteristics, human capital, and economic capital. An assessment of their transnationalism is provided by primary qualitative data gathered through in‐depth interviews. Overall, the review of the literature on Taiwanese migration to various countries, and their transnationalism, indicates that research has primarily been conducted in Australia and the United States, while it remained understudied in Canada. The article makes a case for contextualizing Taiwanese entrepreneurial migration in terms of a global immigration marketplace and the specific business migration programmes in Australia, United States, and Canada. Further, the article argues for the appropriateness of conceptualizing these Taiwanese entrepreneurs as operating within the theoretical framework of transnational social space. The findings on transnational social space include the importance of transnational familial networks, transnational business circuits, and transmigration. Transnational familial networks constitute a form of “capital” as the dispersal is a “resource”. The transnational business circuits include three types: (1) Asian production‐North American distribution; (2) retail chains; and (3) import‐export, all spatially distributed with their multiple national sites. In selected areas of the presentation and discussion of the data the policy implications of the findings are explored. These include discussion of the implications of this transnationalism on Canadian policies such as immigration, multiculturalism, business development, international trade, economic development, and citizenship. There is clearly a lack of harmonization among migration policy and other social and economic policies in Canada. While Canadian multiculturalism policy facilitates transnationalism, Canadian citizenship policy is shown to conflict with and discourage transnational practices.