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An Introduction to Contextual Strategic EntrepreneurshipStrategic entrepreneurship (SE): Perspectives on the Regional Contexts, Social Elements, and Entrepreneurial Competitiveness Read chapter Read first chapter

2022 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

The Meaning of Being a Migrant Entrepreneur: An Intersectional Approach to Mixed Embeddedness Theory

Authors : Alexandra Heis, Petra Dannecker

Published in: Contextual Strategic Entrepreneurship

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

By highlighting institutional constraints and market opportunities in various environments, the mixed embeddedness approach has considerably enriched the migrant entrepreneurship debate. However, despite socio-theoretical advancements on ethnicity, gender, class and migration background, and the social construction and intersectionality of these categories, the “social embeddedness” of the population groups in question remains unchallenged by this approach. Engaging intersectional and constructivist perspectives on identity and difference, this chapter argues for a revision of the mixed embeddedness approach, in order to more strongly address the constitution of the migrant category in entrepreneurship, instead of taking it for granted.
Comparing two main shopping streets in two different Viennese districts, the chapter examines the relationship between embeddedness and agency and how both the market and the actors are entangled in a multiplicity of interdependent social relations. Simmering is a blue-collar district at the city’s fringes, while Neubau, the unofficial city center, is home to the most important shopping street in Vienna and contains an aspiring creative milieu. Both reveal a very different mix of gendered and ethnicized businesses. In this chapter, we address how the category of migrant becomes relevant in the local economies of these two distinct sites. The chapter asks the question: how are these categories articulated and how do they intersect with everyday encounters in business life and the opportunity structures there?

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Footnotes
1
See Azmat 2013; Baycan-Levent 2010; Pio 2007; Verduijn & Essers 2013, Dannecker & Cakir 2016; Villares-Varela & Essers 2019 for example.
 
2
Lifeworld (Lebenswelt), like every day, or the quotidian have been conceptual frameworks of phenomenological philosophy and sociology (Lefebvre, 1991; Schutz, 1962) from the 1920s onward. They refer to experience of the world as it is, not reflected and unquestioned by scientific method. The concepts of the quotidian are an entry point for analysis of a number of different schools—the sociology of knowledge, the situationists and Marxist analysis, the critical theory, as well as ethnomethodology. The basic assumption in life-world approaches, and their contribution to social science, is the focus on meanings and symbolical values of objects. Edmund Husserl, for example, argued for a transcendental nature of objects, denying the possibility of observing the object world directly. For social scientists, this means that the nature and meaning of social phenomena are not simply given, or unambiguously existing outside, or prior to their social, interactive constitution (see (Berger & Luckmann, 1991; Schütz & Luckmann, 1973)).
 
3
We refer here to the scholarly tradition, in which social categories, as well as identities and subjectivities, are regarded as constructed, i.e., the result of action, interaction, and reproduction of interpretation systems, of patterns of agency and socialisation. This is not to deny the material and physical aspects of individuals, but to say that how we as a society interpret the materiality of being, is a question of social negotiation (Berger & Luckmann, 1991; West & Fenstermaker, 1995).
 
4
Positionality, together with standpoint and situation, are concepts aimed at defining identity in relation to others (Franks, 2002, p. 38).
 
5
Intersectionality as an analytical angle on how different experiences of inequality and difference intersect, to create specific form of marginalisation and discrimination. Framed by Crenshaw to depict the situated and interdependent nature of discrimination experiences for black women, intersectionality stands for an emancipative, anti-oppressive, and post-colonial (Hall, 1996) scientific program. In addition, it speaks to the epistemological problems addressed by positionality, standpoint, and situation theories. In migration research, intersectionality as heuristic device was used by Floya Anthias and Nora Yuval-Davis (1996) to address the relations between gender, class, and ethnicity in the context of the global hierarchy of power and international migration.
 
6
Dahinden (2016) criticizes the tendency of migration research and migration scholars to reproduce the categories of the migration apparatus, based on nation-state centric perspectives on societies, history, and space.
 
7
The research project focuses explicitly on female migrant entrepreneurs in Vienna and was funded by the Anniversary Fund of the Oesterreichische Nationalbank (OeNB). This project is part of the research platform “Mobile Cultures and Societies” at the University of Vienna (2016–2019).
 
8
Post-migrant societies are acknowledging the constitution of national societies as based in ethno-cultural plurality and heterogeneity (Foroutan, 2019; Yildiz & Berner, 2021).
 
9
Regarding co-existence, social mix, integration, or other imaginaries of urban sociality vary. Richard Sennett (2018) suggests that we need more interaction in order to increase the social fabric in urban areas, which are endangered by increasing individualisation and isolation. On the contrary, Iris Young (1990) argues for the possibility of an “unassimilated otherness,” where interaction is not seen as a necessary precondition of peaceful and tolerant cohabitation based on acceptance, not weighting of difference (Massey, 2005).
 
10
Interviewed business owners HN 11, November 2017; HN 7, September 2017.
 
11
Category D classifies flats without water supply and toilets inside. In this case, shared toilets and water pipes were in the hallways.
 
12
Interviewed business owner HS 6, April 2017; Interviewed Expert XS 3, June 2017; Interviewed Expert XS 2 August 2017.
 
13
Interviewed business owner, HS 13, May 2017.
 
14
Licenced trades require the completion of the professional qualification (in German the “Meister”) for hairdressers and wigmakers (hairstylists) to enter self-employment, and open a business, or alternatively a year of experience in a trade-specific business, and some other exceptions. For immigrants the main way to trade license is to undergo the vocational training and obtain the formal qualification, to work as shop manager for several years under a license holder, or to apply for the so-called individual qualification certificate, whereby qualification is granted by the guild. Going through vocational training, which takes 3 years and requires proficient language skills, is very demanding for migrants in general. In particular, it is a burden for barbers/hairdressers from the Middle East, who often learn hairdressing from a very young age onwards, but without formal education, but with a lot of practice (Acar, 2010). The access to a barber license is therefore easier to obtain, and an institutional and market opportunity for migrant barbers to enter self-employment. Obviously, this was not planned when allowing the individual qualification certificate to ease the access to licenses, and some guilt representatives claim that the quality control is not sufficient (Stylisten Agentur, 2018).
 
15
We define Middle East here as the region stretching from Northern Africa, over the Balkans to central Asia. We are aware of the Eurocentric perspective reflected there but running short of more suitable terminology.
 
16
Interviewed Expert, XS 4, May 2017, Interviewed barber, HS 3, June 2017.
 
17
The term “welfare queen” was coined by Ronald Reagan in referring to an Afro-American woman accused of receiving welfare benefits for multiple identities. Ange-Marie Hancock (2004) has picked it up in her study of the neoliberal welfare reform in the US.
 
18
The names of the exemplary interviewed partners are fictional.
 
19
Interviewed business owner, HS 6, April 2017.
 
20
Interviewed business owner HS 6, April 2017; Interviewed Expert XS 3, June 2017.
 
21
Interviewed business owners HS 6, April 2017, Interviewed business owner HS 9, May 2017.
 
22
Ibid.
 
23
Interviewed business owner HS 10, June 2017; HS 8, June 2017.
 
24
Interviewed Expert XS 3, June 2017.
 
25
Interviewed barber, HS 3, June 2017.
 
26
Interviewed business owner HS 2, June 2017; HS 10 June 2017.
 
27
Interviewed business owner HS 5, May 2017; HS 6 April 2017; HS 7, May 2017.
 
28
Interviewed business owner HS 8, June 2017.
 
29
Interviewed business owner HS 10, June 2017, Interviewed business owner, HS 8, June 2017.
 
30
Interview with barber, HS 3, June 2017.
 
31
Interviewed barber, HS 3, June 2017.
 
32
Interviewed hairdresser, HN 14, November 2017.
 
33
Interviewed hairdresser HN 11, November 2017.
 
34
Interviewed hairdresser HN 7, September 2017; HN 2, August 2017; HN 15 February 2018
 
35
Own observation, September 2017.
 
36
Interviewed hairdresser HN 14 November 2017; HN 11 November 2017, HN 7, September 2017.
 
37
A lot of the still hegemonic definitions of what an entrepreneur is go back to Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism, where entrepreneurship is a lifestyle of diligence, self-discipline, honesty, and modesty (Brouwer, 2002).
 
38
Interviewed hairdresser HN 14 November 2017; HN 11 November 2017, HN 7, September 2017.
 
39
Agency is concept of social theory, dating back to post-structuralist theory, accentuates individuals and collectives as making, and being able to make active choices. Although agency accepts the power of social norms and institutions, and the constrained nature of individual/collective choices, it marks a departure of the deterministic perspective on social life by structuralist (Davies, 2006).
 
40
Interviewed hairdresser, HN 7, September 2017.
 
41
Interviewed hairdresser, HN 7, September 2017; HN 11, November 2017, HN 14, November 2017.
 
42
Table shows early coding and axial coding results. Unfortunately, the table does not have the flexibility to point out the multiple interrelations and intersectionalities contained in the data.
 
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Metadata
Title
The Meaning of Being a Migrant Entrepreneur: An Intersectional Approach to Mixed EmbeddednessMixed embeddedness Theory
Authors
Alexandra Heis
Petra Dannecker
Copyright Year
2022
Book
Contextual Strategic Entrepreneurship

Print ISBN: 978-3-030-86027-1

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-030-86028-8

Copyright Year: 2022

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86028-8_6