A cross-national comparative study of immigrant entrepreneurship in the United Kingdom, Denmark, and Norway: A qualitative investigation of business start-up experiences
There is a significant need for a cross-national study in ethnic minority entrepreneurship, and in particular of a single migrant community's business start-up experiences across multiple national contexts (Basu, 2006; Greene, 1997; Ilhan-Nas et al., 2011; Legros et al., 2013; Light and Bhachu,...
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English |
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2014
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| Online Access: | http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/id/eprint/23722/ https://eprints.hud.ac.uk/id/eprint/23722/1/nyasinfinalthesis.pdf |
| Summary: | There is a significant need for a cross-national study in ethnic minority entrepreneurship, and in particular of a single migrant community's business start-up experiences across multiple national contexts (Basu, 2006; Greene, 1997; Ilhan-Nas et al., 2011; Legros et al., 2013; Light and Bhachu, 1993; Wood et al., 2012). This doctoral thesis provides a qualitative cross-national investigation concerning the business start-up experiences of immigrant Punjabi-Pakistani entrepreneurs and small business owners who have started businesses in three selected ethnic enclaves in the UK, Denmark, and Norway. This research builds on ethnic entrepreneurship theories by applying the mixed embeddedness perspective, push and pull theory, and the forms of capital approach to combine agency and structural perspectives for the purpose of developing a deeper and more holistic understanding of this phenomenon from the actors' perspectives. More precisely, this study comparatively draws on the enablers and constraints these migrants experience with respect to their migration context, business start-up motivations and the forms of capital available when starting a business in an ethnic enclave. This research draws on qualitative methods of inquiry through a social constructionist perspective by employing in-depth qualitative semi-structured interviews and observations of 45 immigrant Pakistani entrepreneurs and small business owners who have started businesses in the ethnic enclaves of Rusholme (Manchester, UK), Vesterbro (Copenhagen, Denmark) and Grønland (Oslo, Norway). The research access model proposed by Buchanan et al. (1988) is applied by using formal and informal methods to gain research access to these clustered but hard-to-reach communities based on a criterion sampling strategy. The data is analysed using qualitative Template Analysis to draw on thematic similarities and differences between the three sample groups represented in this study. The empirical finding of this study reveals that respondents in the UK experience ... |
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