Immigrant Entrepreneurship and Mixed Cultural Competencies: Ethnographic Perspectives from Turkish Business People in Germany

Abstract

Entrepreneurship, business creation and self-employment are a common pattern for immigrants’ incorporating themselves into Western receiving societies. Sociologists in North America and Western Europe have devoted much energy to explain how poor unskilled immigrants have become business-owners, thereby creating what are often referred to as ‘ethnic’ economies or ‘ethnic’ niches. This scholarship is usually dominated by two key orientations. First, it is predominantly of a socio-economic nature, with comparatively little attention to the cultural implications of business; and second, it is embedded in an ‘ethnic’ approach, according to which ethnicity (broadly defined as individuals’ belonging to a specific social groups) is a key explanatory factor. By contrast, this chapter aspires to shed light on ‘mixed cultural competencies’ in entrepreneurship: this points to the way business relies upon the in-betweeness of entrepreneurs and their capacity to successfully conciliate ethnic and non-ethnic resources. It does so through the ethnographic description of a small number of shops held by German-Turkish businesspeople situated in multiethnic neighbourhoods of Berlin.

Citation

Pécoud, A. (2017), "Immigrant Entrepreneurship and Mixed Cultural Competencies: Ethnographic Perspectives from Turkish Business People in Germany", Espinoza-Herold, M. and Contini, R.M. (Ed.) Living in Two Homes, Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 33-59. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-78635-781-620171002