Researching migrant entrepreneurship communities: a reflection through collaborative (auto)ethnographies
- PDF / 433,640 Bytes
- 20 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 41 Downloads / 153 Views
Researching migrant entrepreneurship communities: a reflection through collaborative (auto)ethnographies Natalia Vershinina 1
& Allan
Discua Cruz 2
Accepted: 6 November 2020/ # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract In this paper we offer a scholarly reflection about the value of ethnographic methods for studying migrant entrepreneurship; this reflection is seen specifically through the lens of our own migration experiences. Our positionalities and subjectivities, embedded in being migrants and researchers, offer this opportunity for in-depth reflection. Specifically, we examine what varieties of ethnographic research methods offer, as well as what limitations these methods bring if adopted within migrant entrepreneurship research. We argue that specific ethnographic practice-based methods have the capacity to reveal the rich social context of migrant entrepreneurship, which can supplement the theoretical perspectives. We adopt two illustrations to highlight the relevance of ethnographic methodologies to studying migrant entrepreneurship. The contribution this study offers is in suggesting new methods that allow fresh understanding of the complex narratives of migration dynamics to emerge. This study shows how narratives intertwine with migrants’ stories of entrepreneurship and offers guidance for future research. Keywords Migrant entrepreneurship . Autoethnography . Ethnography . Reflexivity .
Researcher positionality . Context
Introduction The field of migrant entrepreneurship is mature. It builds on the work of numerous sociologists and anthropologists, whose insight on structure and agency (Giddens * Natalia Vershinina [email protected] Allan Discua Cruz [email protected]
1
Department of Business and Society, Audencia Business School, Nantes 44312, France
2
Department of Entrepreneurship and Strategy, Lancaster University Management School, Bailrigg LA14YX, UK
International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal
1984), acculturation (Light et al. 1994; Portes and Jensen 1989), forms of capital (Ram et al. 2008; Vershinina et al. 2011; Discua Cruz and Fromm 2019), with special focus on ethnicity and social capital (Barrett and Vershinina 2017), and the latest theory of mixed embeddedness (Kloosterman et al. 2016; Kloosterman et al. 1999), highlight how migrants engage a set of resources to fit their ventures within the institutional, political, and regulatory environment. Whilst the empirical work illuminating how migrant entrepreneurial actors from different ethnic groups and countries settle in new host environments engages a variety of methodologies, studies very rarely reflect upon the role of the researcher within such scholarly works. This study questions the potential of ethnographic methodologies for studying migrant entrepreneurship by recognising the specificity of researcher experiences in developing an understanding of migrants’ occupational choices and practices, and, specifically, how researchers treat their subjects of research d
Data Loading...
