Immigrant Entrepreneurship
The increasing rate of immigration alongside globalization over recent decades has spurred scholarly interest in immigrant entrepreneurship across numerous fields, including anthropology, economics, psychology, sociology, and public policy (Bailetti, 2018; Barrett & Vershinina, 2017; Brzozowski, 2017; Contreras-Sweet, 2015; Dabić et al., 2020; Dana, 2007a; Jones, Ram, & Edwards, 2006; Nazareno et al., 2019; Ram et al., 2017). Existing literature views immigrant entrepreneurship as a dynamic process that is influenced and shaped by complex interactions between macro-, meso-, and micro-level factors (Crawley & Hagen‐Zanker, 2019). Existing studies have focused on immigrant entrepreneurs’ lack of or unrecognized skills and qualifications, including language capacity in the host nation and limited employment opportunities (Volery, 2007; Waldinger, Aldrich, & Ward, 1990). Literature suggests that due to a lack of resources, many immigrants migrate and establish their business with their family in a host country where their ethnic community is already well developed (Chavan & Taksa, 2017; Jones et al., 2018; Jones et al., 2014). As such, their family and social networks become key drivers to facilitate the establishment of niche ethnic businesses3 (Griffin‐EL & Olabisi, 2018; Kloosterman, 2010; Rath, 2000; Rath, 2002; Villadsen & Wulff, 2018; Volery, 2007; Waldinger et al., 1990). Scholars have identified that such entrepreneurs are often dependent on their family for labor and start-up capital (Sanders & Nee, 1996). These entrepreneurs typically serve low-end markets in which they mainly compete on price by offering cheap goods and services while also creating jobs in urban areas where unemployment tends to be substantial (Chrysostome, 2010; Kloosterman & Rath, 2003; Kloosterman, 2010; Rath, 2000; Rath, 2002; Waldinger et al., 1990). Demetry (2017) provided significant insights into the importance of the transitionary nature of entrepreneurship. Of particular value for the approach taken in this manuscript is her argument that entrepreneurship involves “a succession of activities carried out across time, culminating in business creation” (Demetry, 2017: 204). It is this emergent perspective that forms the basis of our process model. To generate entrepreneurial ideas, immigrant entrepreneurs count on networks and resources in both the host and home countries (Bolívar-Cruz, Batista-Canino, & Hormiga, 2014; Evansluong & Ramírez-Pasillas, 2019; Kloosterman, 2010). In particular, family networks and resources often help entrepreneurs build and connect with multiple network types to create and develop their businesses (Evansluong, 2016).
Today, in contrast to previous decades, not all immigrant entrepreneurs seek to solely provide self-employment for survival when starting a business. There are many different types of immigrant entrepreneurs, some of whom are highly educated and successfully exploit innovative ideas (Kushnirovich, Heilbrunn, & Davidovich, 2018). Immigrant entrepreneurs tend to provide vital goods and services to both business and household customers in the host country. They increasingly embrace knowledge-intensive activities and intricate global webs of interdependence (Kloosterman, Mamadouh, & Terhorst, 2018). According to some scholars, immigrant entrepreneurs are fostering the emergence of new spatial forms of social cohesion (Simon, 1997; Tarrius & Péraldi, 1995) by opening up trade links through networks to their home countries (Chavan & Taksa, 2017) and transnational networks of culturally distinct immigrant entrepreneurs (Faist, 1997; Guarnizo, 1996; Kloosterman et al., 1999; Portes, 1995; Wallace, 1997). However, entrepreneurship literature has been criticized for overlooking the socially and culturally embedded nature of immigrant entrepreneurial activities (De Clercq & Voronov, 2009; Moghaddam, Aidov, DuVal, & Azarpanah, 2017; Szkudlarek & Wu, 2018; Thornton, Ribeiro-Soriano, & Urbano, 2011), and for promoting an overly deterministic view of disadvantaged immigrant entrepreneurs whereby co-ethnic social networks are seen as their only business resource (Jones et al., 2014).
In contrast, this study focuses on highly successful IFB entrepreneurs who have relied on their families and multiple embedded networks to establish and enable their business to expand and thrive in the host country and ultimately in the international market. Our findings support the evolving nature of embeddedness, which has helped transform IFBs into transnational businesses, linking together their country of origin and country of settlement, and even beyond to international networks for global expansion.