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Migrant Entrepreneurship, Social Geography, Self-employment, Mixed-embeddedness

Trevor Jones is Professorial Research Fellow at CREME, the Centre for Research in Ethnic Minority Entrepreneurship, at Aston Business School. Jones has worked collaboratively and published widely with his co-author Monder Ram and other researchers at CREME for the past two decades. 

'The Evolution of Business Support Policy for Ethnic Minority Entrepreneurs' - Undertaken in collaboration with Prof Richard Roberts and Prof Monder Ram. 

• This project seeks to use a mixture of archival and contemporary sources of research material to chart the development and content of UK business support for the SME community.  While much has been written about the importance of the Bolton Inquiry into small firms (1969-71) most of this concentrates on the political circumstances at the time.  Virtually nothing has been researched to identify the linkages between the Inquiry and subsequently the detailed emergence and development of specific support policies.  Initial work is underway on charting the development of EMB policy between the late 1970s and today with a view to a greater understanding of policy issues.  Similar work is already planned on small business finance policy with other areas to be investigated when time and resources allow.

'Rethinking Migrant Entrepreneurship' - Undertaken in collaboration with Prof Monder Ram, Dr Maria Villares (Southampton University), Dr Hongqin Li and ACH (Ashley COmmunity Housing). 

• A long-term programme of knowledge exchange that comprises a variety of different interventions, including academic research on the aspirations of refugee entrepreneurs; capacity-building support for ACH staff; and collaboration on ACH’s national ‘Rethinking Refugees’ campaign, which aims to promote a positive discourse on refugees in the UK

'The Psychological Contract and Migrant Entrepreneurs' - Undertaken in collaboration with Dr Sudeshna Bhattacharya and Prof Monder Ram.

• What is the career trajectory of migrant entrepreneurs? This is a rarely explored question, and it easy to see why: migrant businesses are often precarious with limited prospects for longevity; micro-businesses (which encompasses most migrant enterprises) remain small and are pre-occupied with day-to-day survival; and such firms lack internal labour markets, thus problematising the notion of ‘career’. This project generated new academic knowledge by interrogating a unique qualitative data set comprising case studies of migrant firms studied since 2010. We revisit these firms and examine the extent to which the notion of career helps to explain their trajectories. 

   

'Refugee Entrepreneurs: Now and Then' - Undertaken in collaboration with Prof Monder Ram, Dr Maria Villares (Southampton University)  and Dr Sabina Doldor (University of Birmingham). 

• What happens to refugees during the entrepreneurial life-cycle? Do refugees simply view entrepreneurship as means of survival? Do they simply ‘get’ by’ on a day-to-day basis? Or is their scope for significant growth? We examine these questions in our longitudinal qualitative study of how refugee-origin entrepreneurs in the UK develop their businesses over a period of time.

Professorial Research Fellow

Centre for Research in Ethnic Minority Entrepreneurship (CREME)

Aston Business School

Sept 2018 - present