Three waves of immigrant entrepreneurship: a cross-national comparative study

This paper makes a seminal contribution to the ethnic entrepreneurship literature by analyzing the journeys of a single migrant community across three ethnic enclaves in three host-nation contexts. Qualitative interviews were conducted with 52 immigrant Punjabi-Pakistani entrepreneurs who started businesses in immigrant enclaves in the UK, Denmark, and Norway. “Three waves” of migrant entrepreneurs were identified based on their demographics, periods of migration, levels of education, access to social and financial resources, and the impact of the host country’s social and institutional structures. The typology presented distinguishes the first wave, the older generation, as “pushed-displaced,” the second wave of the mid-aged generation as “pulled-transnational,” and the third wave of recent graduates and mid-career professionals as “pushed-frustraters.” The findings revealed the raison d’être for cross-national embeddedness variation in the host country’s economic, social, and institutional contexts, and individuals’ experiences of racial discrimination and exclusion. The results highlight that adopting an ethnic enclave strategy by lending the social capital and access to an “acquainted mentor,” usually from the first-wave entrepreneurs, has been the key success factor for the start-up, survival, and growth of the second- and third-wave immigrant businesses. The paper provide guidelines to make the appropriate social and regulatory interventions needed to eradicate racial discrimination and institutional barriers to stimulate immigrant entrepreneurship in these countries.