TY - JOUR
T1 - New migrant businesses and their workers
T2 - developing, but not transforming, the ethnic economy
AU - Edwards, Paul
AU - Ram, Monder
AU - Jones, Trevor
AU - Doldor, Sabina
PY - 2016
Y1 - 2016
N2 - Studies of businesses established by migrants to the UK traditionally stressed co-ethnic relationships as economic resources. More recent work identifies a new ethnic economy characterized by migrants’ common experiences, with ethnicity playing less of a role. The present study complements this newer perspective through investigation of the experiences of forty-nine business owners and sixty of their workers in the West Midlands. Economic relationships were central to the operation of migrant firms, and a minority of firms escaped from sectors traditionally dominated by migrant firms. Yet substantial continuity was also evident, including exclusion from the mainstream on ethnic lines and relations with workers characterized by informality. Migrant business is evolving but it retains many of its features; this pattern can be explained by combining the mixed embeddedness theory of the enterprise with labour process analysis.
AB - Studies of businesses established by migrants to the UK traditionally stressed co-ethnic relationships as economic resources. More recent work identifies a new ethnic economy characterized by migrants’ common experiences, with ethnicity playing less of a role. The present study complements this newer perspective through investigation of the experiences of forty-nine business owners and sixty of their workers in the West Midlands. Economic relationships were central to the operation of migrant firms, and a minority of firms escaped from sectors traditionally dominated by migrant firms. Yet substantial continuity was also evident, including exclusion from the mainstream on ethnic lines and relations with workers characterized by informality. Migrant business is evolving but it retains many of its features; this pattern can be explained by combining the mixed embeddedness theory of the enterprise with labour process analysis.
UR - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01419870.2015.1116702
U2 - 10.1080/01419870.2015.1116702
DO - 10.1080/01419870.2015.1116702
M3 - Article
VL - 39
SP - 1587
EP - 1617
JO - Ethnic and Racial Studies
JF - Ethnic and Racial Studies
SN - 0141-9870
IS - 9
ER -