Immigrant Entrepreneurs Research Articles

Mi Casa Es Tu Casa: Immigrant Entrepreneurs as Pathways to Foreign Venture Capital Investments

AbstractResearch SummaryVenture capital (VC) firms predominantly source investments from local networks within tight geographic bounds. Against that tendency, VCs are increasingly investing internationally—but with substantial heterogeneity across firms in extent, location, and success. We propose a mechanism that explains these patterns. The ties VCs form to immigrant entrepreneurs when investing domestically provide access to the knowledge and connections of those immigrants, which facilitates VC investments in the immigrants' homelands. Using data on U.S. VC activity in India, we find that firms invest in more Indian startups as their ties to Indian entrepreneurs in the United States increase—particularly in the Indian region where immigrants originate and when the VC faces heightened domestic competition. Such ties also enhance the odds of successful exit for the VC's Indian investments.Managerial SummaryWhy are venture capital (VC) firms increasingly investing in foreign startups, and why do these firms differ in the location and success of such international investments? We demonstrate that the ties to immigrant entrepreneurs VCs establish when investing domestically provide knowledge and connections that enable future VC investments in the immigrants' homelands. Using data on U.S. VC firms, we find that the more ties to Indian immigrant entrepreneurs a firm develops, the more it subsequently invests in Indian startups. This effect is stronger when the VC firm faces heightened domestic competition (a push effect) and in the specific regions of India where the immigrants originate (a pull effect). Domestic ties to Indian immigrants also help U.S. VCs make more successful investments in India.

The Canadian experience from the perspective of Brazilian immigrant entrepreneurship in Toronto

Objective: The study aims at analyzing the socio-demographic profile of Brazilian immigrant entrepreneurship in Toronto, its entrepreneurial behavioral traits, in addition to their business profiles. Methodology/approach: This research is multi-method, with qualitative predominance, being exploratory-descriptive. For data-collection it was conducted a survey and further deepening with face-to-face interviews and field observations. Main results: The majority declared themselves to be from the Brazilian Southeast, white, 35 to 49 years old, married, with children, high academic and professional background. The influence of the state of social malaise in Brazil and the official Canadian discourse, seem to act as factors of "expulsion-attraction" to migration. The job condition of unemployment upon immigrants’ arrival can “push” them into necessity-driven entrepreneurship, although there are also ventures that have identified opportunities. Most of the businesses are small and operate in the service sector, concentrated on the West End of Toronto. In many businesses, there was a strong search for identification with the ethnic community itself, which suggests the formation of 'enclave economy', but in some cases, the main market for local consumers was targeted. Theoretical/methodological contributions: The article highlights the importance of conducting a multi-method research to understand possible entrepreneurial configurations by Brazilian immigrants. Relevance / originality: the article has academic relevance given the scarce work on the theme of Brazilian immigrant entrepreneurship overseas. Truly little is known about this phenomenon in Canada. Social and management contributions: The entrepreneurial trajectories described minimize risks for future immigrants; in addition, the discussion about the social capital of the ethnic community allows comparisons with the business of Brazilians in other countries.

How citizen spouses help immigrant entrepreneurs pull up their bootstraps: The case study of married Thai immigrant entrepreneurs in Japan

The significance of citizen spouses of immigrants is often downplayed in the success of immigrant entrepreneurs in the settlement country. This study employs in-depth interviews with four Thai immigrant entrepreneurs to illustrate the immense roles of Japanese citizen spouses in helping their businesses. We argue that the assumption that immigrant entrepreneurs are “pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps” does not provide a broader view of the process to their success. The findings show examples of how Japanese citizen spouses make an enormous contribution to the venture of their Thai spouse's business by helping them overcome structural barriers as well as legal issues in Japan.

Is it possible to increase the opportunity motivation of immigrant entrepreneurs in Europe?

Este estudio analiza los factores que condicionan la motivación por oportunidad del inmigrante emprendedor establecido en 31 países europeos. Se encuentra que la distancia lingüística existente entre los países de residencia y de origen del inmigrante socava su motivación emprendedora por oportunidad. El trabajo también encuentra que tal motivación aumenta cuando: (1) la cultura del país de acogida se caracteriza por la presencia de valores culturales de elevada aversión a la incertidumbre, que habitualmente reduce el comportamiento emprendedor de la población local; y (2) las leyes y regulaciones vigentes en su país de origen y su país residencia difieren.

Key locational factors for immigrant entrepreneurs in top entrepreneurial ecosystems

This study describes the locational factors that are most valuable and useful to immigrant entrepreneurs in the Bay Area, which is also referred to as Silicon Valley in this paper. Silicon Valley is the world’s leading entrepreneurial and technological ecosystem. As such, it attracts thousands of entrepreneurs with outstanding technical skills and talent from all over the world. Through enduring leadership, Silicon Valley is able to set the pace of entrepreneurship, and the trends that emerge in this ecosystem rapidly spread to establish themselves as rules almost everywhere. Silicon Valley’s appeal to foreign entrepreneurs is based on their hopes of finding investors and markets to scale up their companies. The goal of this study is to identify the locational factors of Silicon Valley that are most valued by immigrant entrepreneurs and to classify and rank the factors that are most closely linked to the successful performance of new ventures founded by immigrant entrepreneurs. Empirical analysis was conducted in 2014 through personal interviews with 54 new ventures that were founded or co-founded by Spanish entrepreneurs in the Bay Area. A follow-up was performed in 2019 to track their performance. This sample is representative of the population of new ventures founded by Spanish entrepreneurs in the Bay Area. Eight top-ranked locational factors cited in the literature were included in the analysis model, together with variables related to the personal profile of the founding team and the markets served by the companies under analysis. After just five years (2014–2019), almost half of the companies had failed. Around 30% remained active but were failing to meet expectations, and only 12 of the 54 companies could be deemed fully successful. Qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) reveals some locational factors as necessary conditions: the capacity to rapidly build a solid network of investors, firms, and other stakeholders; and the unique nature of the Bay Area market, which is especially conducive to testing new products, business models, and technologies. The findings contribute to the literature on entrepreneurial ecosystems by providing new evidence of the resources and locational factors that are most valued by immigrant entrepreneurs in top entrepreneurial hubs. Several managerial implications follow directly from the findings. These implications include a ranking of the environmental factors that appeal most to immigrant entrepreneurs running high-growth new ventures, together with the conditions to which they are indifferent. This study also provides valuable clues and guidelines for policymakers to enhance their entrepreneurial hubs and make them more attractive. The principal limitation of this study is the coverage of the empirical analysis, which was based only on entrepreneurs from Spain. The intention is to expand the data set in future research by including immigrant entrepreneurs from other regions, starting with Latin American countries.

Understanding immigrant entrepreneurship: a home-country entrepreneurial ecosystem perspective

PurposeGiven the importance of immigration and immigrant entrepreneurs in advanced economies, the authors take an entrepreneurial ecosystem perspective to study the home-country benefits possessed by immigrant entrepreneurs and how home-country entrepreneurial ecosystem factors affect immigrant entrepreneurial motivations, activities and outcomes.Design/methodology/approachThis conceptual research paper follows McGaghie, Bordage and Shea's (2001) four-step new theory creation process, which suggests that new theories can be created through facts extraction from the extant literature.FindingsThe authors propose that although immigrant entrepreneurs are unable to take full benefit of the host-country entrepreneurial ecosystem due to blocked mobility, they do have capabilities to access and use their home-country entrepreneurial resources and opportunities. The authors further propose that home-country entrepreneurial capital can be systemically analyzed through the framework of the entrepreneurial ecosystem. The results imply that immigrant entrepreneurship as a social and economic phenomenon can be studied more holistically from both host- and home-country perspectives compared to the traditional research boundary of the host-country only.Research limitations/implicationsThe research focuses on the identification of home-country effects on immigrant entrepreneurship through the lens of the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Testable propositions provide directions for future empirical research on the field of immigrant entrepreneurship from a home-country perspective. The research concludes that a holistic immigrant entrepreneurship study should consider dual (host- and home-country) entrepreneurial ecosystems.Practical implicationsImmigrant entrepreneurs benefit from both host- and home-country entrepreneurial ecosystems. This paper suggests co-effects of dual entrepreneurial ecosystems lead to a high rate of entrepreneurship and business success within some immigrant groups. Policymakers can increase economic activities by developing and deploying programs to encourage immigrants to embed in host- and home-country entrepreneurial ecosystems.Originality/valueBased on the framework of the entrepreneurial ecosystem, this paper brings a novel perspective to examining home-country effects on immigrant entrepreneurship. It theoretically conceptualizes that immigrants have higher entrepreneurship rates than native-born populations because they have access to extra home-country entrepreneurial capital.

The mirroring of intercultural and hybridity experiences: A study of African immigrant social entrepreneurs

Paradox theory is attracting increasing interest from entrepreneurship scholars seeking to understand how entrepreneurs who operate hybrid organizations such as prosocial ventures can effectively address grand challenges. The organizational paradox literature suggests that differences in actors' approach to paradoxes can occur through the acquisition of different reasoning styles through exposure to different national cultures and cultural resources. We complement the paradox research stream on culture as a resource with the alternative perspective of culture as an experience, which we argue offers additional insight into hybridity within a global context because intercultural experiences are intrinsically paradoxical. Our 18 case studies of immigrant entrepreneurs from the African diaspora operating their prosocial ventures in Western contexts finds that the ways that immigrant entrepreneurs approach tensions in their prosocial ventures mirrors the nature of their intercultural experience. We also find that approaches to paradox vary based on structural barriers such as social exclusion that entrepreneurs faced in their formative years. Overall, our study contributes to research on culture in paradox theory and the prosocial venturing literature by elucidating how entrepreneurs' intercultural experience and the global macro-level systems in which it is embedded inform the degree and configurations of hybridity in prosocial ventures.

Mainland Chinese Immigrant-owned SMEs in Malaysia: Case Studies

This article explores the contributions of—and constraints faced by—small and medium enterprises (SMEs) owned by mainland Chinese immigrant entrepreneurs in Malaysia using qualitative research and primary data gathered from five cases. It was found that Chinese immigrant SMEs make significant contributions to the host economy in terms of employment, diverse products and services, exports, innovation, micro foreign direct investment (FDI) and global linkages. Of these, employment creation and exports appear to be their most important contributions. They face various constraints, some of which are largely the same as those faced by local entrepreneurs. However, they additionally face some specific constraints which local entrepreneurs do not, such as language barrier, lack of financial support in the growth stage, lack of government assistance, and onerous bureaucratic problems, such as tax and visa requirements. The findings suggest that the government should create a special department to formulate tailor-made policies and incentives to support immigrant-owned SMEs, so that their contribution to the future economic development of Malaysia can be further strengthened and monitored.

Immigrant Entrepreneurship in Romania: Drawing Best Practices From Middle Eastern Immigrant Entrepreneurs’ Experiences

Migrant entrepreneurship represents a topic of a high societal and academic significance. For a host country, immigrant entrepreneurs’ endeavours are, in many cases, an under-utilized lever for local and regional economic revival. Based on a complex field research carried out between July 2017 and December 2018, the present paper approaches immigrant entrepreneurship in Romania, with a particular focus on Middle Eastern immigrant entrepreneurs. Our multi-method qualitative field research – consisting of semi-structured interviews, observations and informal discussions – envisaged 97 immigrant businesses, targeting the analysis of the phenomenon from different perspectives: economic, social, cultural, political, and institutional. Aiming to draw best practices from the investigated Middle Eastern immigrant entrepreneurs’ experiences, the research results outlined in this paper emphasize both descriptive and practical features. Migration-related particularities, entrepreneurs’ profile, business obstacles, business practices, or perspectives on and comparisons of the Romanian business environment with the one in the origin country represent just few examples of aspects thoroughly approached in the paper.

Supply of immigrant entrepreneurs and native entrepreneurship

Abstract Using nationally representative data from the United States, the author estimates the causal impact of immigrant entrepreneurship on entrepreneurial propensities of natives. The author draws data from the Annual Social and Economic Supplement of the Current Population Survey and uses within-state variation in supply of immigrant entrepreneurs for identification. To address concerns of endogeneity in the supply of immigrant entrepreneurs, the author takes advantage of a quasi-experiment provided by the State Children's Health Insurance Program. While the Ordinary Least Squares estimates indicate a positive effect, the Two Stage Least Squares estimates suggest that, on average, there is no significant effect of immigrant entrepreneurs on native entrepreneurship. Moreover, there is no net effect on subgroups of natives separated by skill level. There is also some evidence that immigrant entrepreneurs may “crowd-in” Blacks into certain types of self-employment. These results are in contrast to the significant negative impact suggested by the previous literature.

If you wanted garlic, you had to go to Kensington: culinary infrastructure and immigrant entrepreneurship in Toronto’s food markets before official multiculturalism

ABSTRACT This essay examines how culinary infrastructure encouraged and impeded immigrant entrepreneurship in provisioning Toronto before Canada adopted an official policy of multiculturalism in the 1970s. Culinary infrastructure refers broadly to facilities and technologies – both physical and knowledge-based – that undergird food systems. The Anglo-dominated infrastructural hub of the St. Lawrence market provided the central food retailing space during the Victorian era, then became a wholesale depot in the first half of the twentieth century, and finally gentrified into a tourist market in the 1970s. Nevertheless, until the belated rise of supermarkets, most residents purchased food from immigrant entrepreneurs, largely pushcart vendors in the nineteenth century, and increasingly small shopkeepers and street markets such as Kensington in the twentieth. This essay concludes that although the allocation and regulation of markets were intended to assimilate immigrant foodways into an idealized Anglo city, newcomers actively shaped Toronto’s culinary geography.

Pulling Effects in Immigrant Entrepreneurship: Does Gender Matter?

We examine whether the existing stock of immigrant firms induces more new firms of the same nationality in the same sector and province. We carry out the analysis by using Italian administrative data on the population of individual firms observed over the time window 2002–13. We find support for a strong attractiveness (pulling) effect, which significantly differs by gender, with female immigrant entrepreneurs showing a lower reactiveness to the existing stock of firms compared to their male counterparts. Also, we find that exposure to gender inequality matters for the degree of equality of the pulling effect between genders. Only for countries of origin with unequal gender opportunities do female immigrants show a lower pulling effect than their male peers. No difference in the effect between men and women is, instead, found with reference to the degree of gender inequality in the destination.

Butchers, Bakers, and Jewish Strong-Arm Men: Organized Crime in the Kosher Food Trades During the Age of Mass Jewish Migration, 1900–1917

Abstract Throughout the era of Jewish mass migration to the United States, organized crime played a central role in stabilizing the business practices and union affairs in the kosher food industries of the New York metropolitan area. Two key sectors of New York’s kosher foods trades, kosher poultry and Jewish baked goods, demonstrate the various ways in which underworld leaders came to informally police chaotic business sectors upended by laissez-faire capitalism and the large-scale relocation of European Jews to urban America. In kosher poultry, a cartel of butchers, teamsters, and various other workers mobilized organized crime and violence to remove the threat posed by Barnett Baff, an ambitious Jewish immigrant entrepreneur who aimed to vertically integrate the industry. In Jewish baked goods, the labor chieftain Max Kazimirsky managed a brutal and corrupt regime in the Hebrew bakers ’unions. But despite his widely documented use of violence and coercion, Kazimirsky succeeded in maintaining a closed shop system among New York’s bakeries and union control over production and distribution. The domineering role of organized crime in kosher foods during this period conveys the ways immigrants to Gilded Age and Progressive Era America forged their own methods of imposing order over ethnic capitalist marketplaces, ones not approved by city authorities but which, nevertheless, provided a modicum of industrial stability.

Getting Schooled: The Role of Universities in Attracting Immigrant Entrepreneurs

Immigrant founders of venture capital-backed companies have been critical to the entrepreneurial ecosystem. We document the channels through which immigrant founders find their way to the United States and how those channels have changed over time. Immigrants have been an important source of founders for venture capital-backed startups accounting for roughly 20% of all founders over the past 30 years. Immigrants coming to the United States for their education have been the primary source of founders with those coming after being educated abroad and then arriving for work decreasing in importance over time. The importance of undergraduate education as a channel for immigrant founders has increased over time. Immigrant founders coming for education are likely to start their companies in the state in which they were educated, especially states where they received their graduate education, leading to potentially large local economic benefits. The results of this paper have important policy implications for the supply of entrepreneurial talent and efforts to promote entrepreneurial ecosystems. Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.

Elucidating the perceived success of Chinese immigrant entrepreneurs in Thailand

The current literature lacks an in-depth understanding of the new cohort of Chinese immigrant entrepreneurs in Thailand. This new cohort group belongs neither to the first generation of Chinese immigrants nor to later generations of Chinese-Thai. This study, therefore, aimed to explain the definition of the perceived success of this new cohort of Chinese immigrant entrepreneurs and its antecedents. The qualitative semi-structured interviews were employed in the Chinese language with 15 Chinese immigrant entrepreneurs. This study found the perceived success summarises not only the material phases of money, business existence and growth but an aspiration to fulfil the personal objective and contribute to the greater good, which both reinforces and extends to the body of the existing literature. Besides, this study also provides entrepreneurs with practical suggestions by elaborating on how to achieve success based on five contributing factors: entrepreneurial mindset, ethnic community, human capital, financial capital, and customer relationship.

Getting Schooled: The Role of Universities in Attracting Immigrant Entrepreneurs

Getting Schooled: The Role of Universities in Attracting Immigrant Entrepreneurs

Success Factors of Immigrant Entrepreneurs in Sri Lanka

Success Factors of Immigrant Entrepreneurs in Sri Lanka

Vietnamese Immigrant Entrepreneurship: A Comparison of Self-Employment in Vietnam and the United States

In this paper, we examine the case of Vietnam as an example of this phenomenon. In Vietnam, the World Bank Indicators show a self-employment rate of 60% among men in 2008, whereas the United States rate is less than 15%. This wide gap between the two countries even greater than that between Mexico and the U.S. (Fairlie and Woodruff, 2007). We use census microdata from Vietnam and the U.S. as well as an understanding of the economic systems in the two countries to understand the differences in the self-employment rate of the Vietnamese in Vietnam versus Vietnamese immigrants in the U.S. and to give some insight into the nature of self-employment in the two countries. We utilize two analysis methods on various variables to investigate the differences in the rates of self- employment. This diversified analysis enables one to understand the differences between the two economies and the differences between Vietnamese workers in Vietnam and Vietnamese immigrants in terms of self-employment. Through these analyses, we can explain some parts of the differences.

Limitations of immigrant entrepreneurship research

Immigrant entrepreneurship research has, so far, addressed various topics and contributed to the advancement of the overall understanding associated with the entrepreneurial behaviour of immigrants. However, research on this field incorporates several limitations. Based on narrative review of the relevant literature, five limitations associated with immigrant entrepreneurship research were identified: 1) geographical bias (research concentration in a few OECD countries particularly the USA); 2) ethnic limitations (research focus on certain ethnic groups); 3) conceptual misspecification (definitional boundaries have not been properly set); 4) thematic bias (research focus on business antecedents than on business outcomes); 5) methodological bias (dominance of quantitative research and small sampling). Necessary implications have as well been illustrated in this paper. Future researchers need to address these limitations or, at least, avoid replicating them to strengthen the research outputs.

Limitations of immigrant entrepreneurship research

Limitations of immigrant entrepreneurship research