Is home where the heart is? Investigating the relationship between hometown and entrepreneurship

The importance of home and hometown for entrepreneurs has significant implications for entrepreneurial identities, venture success, and broader contextual dynamics. Traditionally, the concept of home in entrepreneurship literature is viewed instrumentally, largely focusing on the unit of dwelling (i.e. premises/house/apartment), the implications of location choices, and their effects on performance. We employ a mobilities lens, broadening the concept of home to the city/town scale of ‘hometown’, offering a more holistic understanding of what it means for entrepreneurs from various origins and returns. Our qualitative case study in Norwich, UK, provides nuanced theoretical advancements into understanding home beyond materiality and mere location, highlighting how this is inextricably linked to dynamic renewal within peripheral urban places and different migration pathways (i.e. local, migrant, returnee). Our contributions are threefold: 1) we reveal that varying degrees of localness complicate the local versus non-local binary, impacting entrepreneurial dynamics; 2) our relational model of hometown entrepreneurship challenges the rigid leave-learn-return narrative, demonstrating return migration as a complex detach-experience-revalue socio-cultural reconnection which feeds into the local entrepreneurial ecosystem; 3) exploring the interactions of diverse actors in peripheral urban hometowns provides insights into regional development moving us beyond instrumental views in existing literature.