Strategies and Structures. A multi-disciplinary study of the preconditions for entrepreneurship among immigrants in Sweden.

Abstract

The project analyses how changes in policies and regulations affect conditions and opportunities for small business development in different industries over time, and how self-employed persons act in response to changes in opportunity structures. We study strategies of growth and survival within specific industries and markets, but also transitions of self-employment across industries and types of markets. The project will contribute new knowledge through a systematic and coherent longitudinal and spatial investigation of the dynamics of self-employment among immigrants in Sweden. The project systematically applies and develops instruments from recent international research on ethnic minority businesses (EMB). Theory in the field is developed through the integration of entrepreneurship theory and new theoretical contributions from EMB research. Theoretical perspectives on strategies and self-employed as actors is combined with theory on opportunity structures (the framework of ?mixed embeddedness?). Methodologically, the approach implies coordinated analyses of different dimensions on different levels, using a combination of policy studies, case studies and quantitative analyses.

Keywords

Entrepreneurship, Ethnicity, Social exclusion/inclusion, mixed embeddedness,

Publications

Klinthäll, Martin & Susanne Urban(2014). Second-Generation Immigrants in the

Small-Business Sector in Sweden. Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, 12:3, 210-232.

Högberg, Lena, Tobias Schölin, Monder Ram & Trevor Jones (2014) Categorising and labelling entrepreneurs: Business support organisations constructing the Other through prefixes of ethnicity and immigrantship”. International Small Business Journal, Published online before print November 21, 2014, doi: 10.1177/0266242614555877.